


Interlude

by Agaryulnaer, sarisa



Series: Interlude [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agaryulnaer/pseuds/Agaryulnaer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarisa/pseuds/sarisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part one of an ongoing saga. The team is left to wait out the week between completing the job and the clock running out, hidden away in Yusuf's dream level. Arthur and Eames get to know each other a little better... amongst other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

 

 

  
Arthur can feel the water sliding down his spine, knoww the leather of his favorite jacket is well and truly beyond repair, and even though this is just a dream, it still irks him. One glass of free champagne and they get to spend a week in a torrential downpour. Yusuf is just as cold and miserable as the rest of them, but as they huddle beneath the bridge, waiting for Fischer and Eames, still disguised as Browning, to complete the climb up to the road, Arthur can't help but blame the chemist, petty though he knows it is.

Still, his mind is already working, as he looks back through what he knows of this level, even though Yusuf knows it best, planning their next move. He always feels better with a plan, an agenda in place, every detail taken care of. He can't relax without it. He needs to _know_ , always know what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, so that he can react appropriately. He needs to plan for all possible contingencies, so that he can have a successful counter-plan in place and get them all home safely.

Fischer's projections have already begun to remove themselves from the bridge and the surrounding area as Arthur watches from the rocks on the shoreline. Ariadne shivers beside him, and he reaches over to rub her arms briskly, watching two suited forms, nearly invisible in the downpour, making their way back up to the road. He makes a face, wondering how long it will take Eames to leave the man and get back to them, but it shouldn't be too dangerous, now. With Fischer believing his kidnappers dead, drowned, and this level reality, his subconscious will no longer be searching for them. They'll meet at the base Ariadne had designed for this level, for the specific purpose of housing them until the timer ends at ten hours, equating roughly to a week at this first level of the dream sequence.

When the coast is clear, he assists Ariadne up to the road on their side of the bridge, reaching back a hand to help Yusuf when he slips. They're all still shaking, still exhausted from the effort they'd all gone to to make this a success. It's true that it _had_ been a success, yes, in terms of Fischer, but Cobb and Saito... he stares back at the spot in the water where the van rests, hidden well beneath the surface of the river, as he's been trying not to do since they'd finally come up for air.

Ariadne is right. Cobb will be fine. He'll find Saito and escape limbo; he'd done it before. And Mal... Arthur doesn't know. But he refuses to make a contingency plan involving his closest friend not returning.

  
Walking as Browning had made for slow going. As though he and Fischer weren't both already cold, wet, and exhausted, affecting the walk of the older man had made the climb up to the road slow and painful. After that, though, things carry on in a blur: they catch a taxi, both soaked men receiving skeptical looks from the driver until Eames-- still in possession of Fischer's wallet, not that he knows that-- pays; not a word is uttered by the man (projection) then. Nor by Fischer, or himself; the younger Fischer thinks he's back to reality, now, and that Eames is his godfather. His godfather who had betrayed him... but who is forgiven, now.

But that doesn't mean that he's safe, especially since the closer Fischer gets to a familiar-seeming place in his dream, the more likely it is that he'll end up running into his _actual_ projection of Browning, which would be... awkward. Eames would like to avoid that, about as much as he would like to avoid being pummeled to death by Fischer's projections if he's caught out in the open, and so an escape is necessary. Dream or no dream, he can't get himself killed. Not unless he wants to end up like Saito-- and maybe Cobb and Ariadne, Eames doesn't know. He'd fled as soon as Fischer _had_ woken in this level, still as Browning, and everyone else who had woken had had to pretend not to-- for Fischer's benefit. Now they'll all be safe from his subconscious, or at least that's the hope, but Eames is stuck only being certain of Arthuer and Yusuf's safety. Also, having to give Fischer the slip.

It turns out to be easier than one would assume. Eames doesn't really have a concrete plan; he just bides his time, keeping an eye out for the right moment. One comes as soon as Fischer makes his way to the hotel office; soaked, exhausted, and freezing, Eames (or, to Fischer, Browning), pleads exhaustion and announces that he's going home to change. A distracted Fischer waves him off, and Eames books it out of there, getting into a cab to leave the area, always recalling that Fischer had seen his actual face at the beginning of all of this.

Twenty minutes later finds him walking again, but this time, taller, rather younger, and significantly better-looking; the suit's gone, replaced with the shirt and jacket he'd been wearing at the start of this particular dream, and Eames heads for the base Ariadne had told him about beforehand, knowing that he'd be separated from them at the end of this.

It takes a long time to walk there, but a longer time still because paranoid, Eames' appearance is never one person or another for very long, and he refuses to take a direct route. After all, Fischer's subconscious believes his attackers dead. Eames won't be the one to bring the fact that they're not to his attention and bring the whole thing crashing down. And of course, it's a damn monsoon the entire time, so that by the time he makes it to the door of the large warehouse that marks the outer part of the safe house Ariadne had designed, there isn't an inch of him that's not soaked through. Twice over, because he'd changed once they'd made it to Fischer's office.

This might not be real, might be a dream, but it's still damn cold. What use is being back in his own skin, as it were, if he's halfway to shivering right out of it? Needless to say, when his knocking isn't answered immediately, Eames begins knocking again; patience is a virtue and all that, but it's bloody freezing out here and he didn't just go through all of that in order to give their position away by standing outside the warehouse, shouting for someone to pretty please let him in.

The door is opened a moment later, and rather quickly; Arthur pulls it open, having realized that while it could potentially have been Dom, it's most likely Eames arriving. The (very brief) delay in his answering had been due to the necesitation of his restraining Ariadne from bolting towards the door, immediately excited that it could be Dom. Arthur is, however, the one with the gun, and so she is standing back some twenty feet or so, as far back as he could move her, and he is pulling the door open a crack to check their visitor's identity... and to avoid bullets, if something has gone awry and their situation has deteriorated without their knowledge.

Arthur looks, obviously, rather unsurprised to see Eames standing there, and hauls the door back without a word (or, it should be noted, any sort of delay or pause), stepping aside and letting Eames hurry in.

He doesn't waste unnecessary words or time, informing Eames that neither Dom nor Saito has returned from Limbo. Eames doesn't even need to observe that the Extractor and the Tourist are not present; Ariadne informs him immediately.

"They're not back," she says bluntly, as soon as he's far enough inside that the rain is no longer hitting him. "They're still lying at the bottom of the river."

Behind Eames, Arthur pulls the door shut on the rain and locks it again. His face might have been carved from stone, but he still doesn't speak; he has nothing to contribute to this branch of the conversation. To his mind, there is nothing else to be said about it.

There’s a pause, during which Eames notes that Cobb and Saito are missing, glancing around the room as Ariadne speaks. He’s not surprised, to tell the truth; when Cobb and Ariadne had gone down after Fischer… well, Eames hadn’t really expected them to come back easily. Obviously Fischer had come back, so he had hoped… but when Saito had died in the lowest level, Eames had known it wouldn’t work out. Frankly, he’s surprised _Ariadne_ is here, although perhaps he shouldn’t be. It would be like Cobb to get her out and end up staying behind himself.

Pulling off his soaked jacket, Eames spends a moment attempting to squeeze some of the water out; this does nothing, really, besides getting the floor wet to match him. He sends a comforting sort of smile Ariadne’s way. “Well, _you‘re_ here,” he says, genuinely pleased that she hadn’t been done for, as he’d been betting she would be from the moment she got on the plane. “It’s good to see you made it back, love.”

Not that it’s difficult to spot the disappointment that had hit her when Arthur opened the door, and she’d spotted him and not Cobb. Eames doesn’t mind, though. Her crush on the man is painfully obvious, and _his_ return wasn’t in question. “You, too,” Ariadne says, attempting a smile in return. Well, at least she’s polite.

Eames glances back at Yusuf, too, then Arthur, before looking back at Ariadne. No one says anything. Eames spends another minute taking off first one shoe, then another, and dumping water out. No one says anything. Apparently asking is necessary. “Anyone care to elaborate?”

"Dom stayed behind to find Saito," Arthur says calmly, no sound of any sort of worry or distress audible in his voice. He has faith. Dom will be there, when they wake up on the plane in a week. Hard to believe it's only been a few hours, on this level. It feels like it's been three times as long, and he can't imagine how it must feel for Eames, who'd gone a level further down, much less Ariadne.

Deciding that standing around just next to the door is pointless and a waste of time (despite the fact that they have a whole week's worth of time to waste), he walks past Eames and further into the warehouse, patting Yusuf's shoulder as he passes the other man and opening a door that leads into a cement-walled room with a couch and two closed doors leading into other rooms. Ariadne had created this place, and Yusuf's mind had furnished it, which means that all of the books on the bookshelf relate to either dream-sharing or chemistry. Handy, he supposes, although he's never been much for the scientific end of things.

Opening one of the crates stacked near the door, he pulls out the automatic weapon he'd known would be there, deciding that someone needs to go up to the second floor and keep watch. None of the other three here are going to do it. Well, possibly Yusuf, but the chemist has been looking more and more tired, and Eames would bitch and moan until Arthur gave in and did the job anyway, just to end the whining. And he's not being sexist when he says that Ariadne has no idea how to handle a firearm.

"I'll be upstairs," he announces, eyeing each person in the smaller space, smiling slightly at Ariadne. "They'll be fine."

She looks at him, blushes slightly, and nods, looking away, and he decides he's had quite enough of human interaction for the moment, finally looking over at Eames. "Get some rest. You can relieve me later." There's a pause, and rather grudgingly, he adds, "Good job." The first is just to Eames, the second is to all three of his remaining companions. "All of us." With that, he disappears; he never claimed to be Dom, with his ability to give speeches, motivate groups of people.

After that rousing speech, there is a moment of silence as Eames takes it all in, in awe; Yusuf smiles through a yawn, although the odds of him being idiot enough to fall asleep and prolong the time here for himself are low, and Ariadne continues not to look at Arthur, which is thoroughly interesting, at least from Eames' perspective. He raises an eyebrow, but then turns to Arthur as the man is disappearing. Or trying to disappear, mostly he's just wandering off, looking stoic. It makes Eames feel like a character in an old movie. Vivien Leigh should be sweeping in any moment. _Rhett, Rhett... Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?_

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Despite the fact that he's quite busy ringing out all of his clothing, Eames makes the effort to call after the Point Man. After all, they're behaving as though nothing is amiss. So he can't miss such a golden opportunity as this.

A call of, "Don't tempt me, Arthur dear," follows Arthur through the door, along with what might be a stifled laugh from Ariadne, but it's hard to tell over the sound of the water being dumped out of Eames' other shoe.

Arthur's footsteps pause on the other side of the door, but he closes his eyes briefly, letting that wash over him and then away, not allowing himself to get angry and respond. He does not need to lower himself to Eames' level. That's all Eames is looking for: a reaction. He's like a child. If you give him the attention he wants, he'll only keep doing it because he knows then that it works. The best plan is to ignore his comments and focus on anything useful that might eventually come out of the forger's mouth. Rare as those occasions are.

Dom and Saito are stuck in limbo. This isn't the time for jokes, for the love of God.

The sound of his boots on the concrete begins again after the brief interlude, and he disappears up the shaky-looking staircase, ensconcing himself next to one of the windows... outside of which, absolutely nothing is going on. There are no projections visible at all, and he hopes it stays that way. Let Robert Fischer spend the time in his office for a week, hell, banging his secretary for all Arthur cares. He'd just like to not be shot at for the remainder of their time here.

When the clock on the wall, reliable as that is, says that it's been six hours later, Eames finally decides that getting some "rest" in a dream is a rather silly thing to attempt. He won't fall asleep, god knows he's had enough of that, and he's not _actually_ physically tired. All "resting" does is give him time to think over everything that happened, and to wonder and yes, maybe even worry a little. Cobb might have been selfish as all hell, going into this, and yeah, Eames might be pissed at him, but the feeling sort of loses its force when the subject of the anger is stuck in limbo, his return uncertain.

And Saito... Eames had never wanted him to come along. But he did, and it's done, and all there is left to do is wait. The job, at least, is done. Fischer is out, Ariadne is out, so that's something. But not enough that rest is really coming.

So, sick of sitting around, watching Ariadne mope and Yusuf try not to fall asleep (the man is adept at his job, but has less practice actually being _in_ dreams), and at least mostly dry by this point, Eames slowly makes his way after Arthur. The staircase creaks under him, but Eames isn't particularly worried about falling through a loose floorboard. If he falls through anything here, he's going to have a long talk with Yusuf's subconscious, because he doubts Ariadne's plans would allow for shoddy stairs. No such thing happens, predictably, though, and he finds Arthur right where he'd expected to find the point man, staring out the window at... nothing.

"Ours is a glamorous life," he says, looking out the window at the rain and knowing that although the other man hasn't turned to look at him, he heard him coming, or Arthur certainly would have turned and shot him dead by now. "I don't know how you handle the excitement with such aplomb."

"Without some dullness, nothing would be exciting," Arthur counters, finally glancing back over his shoulder at the forger but not moving from where he's sitting, in the same position he'd been in several hours before when he'd first sat down. "I enjoy having the time to think quietly."

Whereas Eames, he knows, does absolutely nothing quietly. Nothing about the man is subtle, from his mannerisms (when he's playing himself, or rather when he's playing the character of Eames; Arthur wonders sometimes if Eames knows who he himself is, anymore. It must be difficult.) to his humor to his obnoxiously loud shirts. Taste is another word that Arthur is certain does not dwell in the forger's personal dictionary.

He's not a little tired himself, as it happens, after all of that. But what he'd really like to know is what had happened to the team after they'd gone down to the third level and left him behind. "What happened in Fischer's dream? Ariadne said Mal shot him."

Completely ignoring the possibly existential nature of Arthur's first comment (which had translated, in its basest form, to Eames as Arthur admitting that he enjoys boredom), Eames withholds a sigh at that question, moving over to sit across from him. This is a conversation, he will admit, best had out of earshot of Ariadne at the moment, who though handling this all with grace and charm is clearly not at ease, waiting for Cobb, and Eames will admit to a bit of a soft spot for the new architect. Arthur, on the other hand, if affected by anything at all, is not likely to be anything but businesslike about the entire ordeal.

"She did," Eames agrees, more _lounging_ than sitting, but his tone allows for the serious nature of the conversation. "We had less time than we'd thought, before the music began, and in speeding things up, attracted a lot of attention." He would know. He was busy un-attracting the attention from the rest of the team. "As far as I know, the woman shot Fischer before Cobb shot her. By the time I got to the room, they were both dead. Ariadne, being the idealistic, slightly psychotic sort-" Which Eames values highly. "-suggested she and Cobb go after him. They did, I don't know what happened, and Saito died as I was setting up charges for the kick at that level."

This is said completely straight, not a trace of worry or emotion, despite the fact that Eames had been the one to find Saito, despite the fact that he'd left the tourist there, alone, to guard Fischer's unconscious body while he'd done what needed to be done, and known the man wasn't going to make it. And maybe that's not a true death, but Eames would rather face death than what Saito was facing, alone and unaware forever, mind long gone if he ever did return.

"Fischer got his own kick via a defibrillator," he continues, "woke up and jaunted right on in to confront his dead father. Then the kick hit, and I haven't the slightest beyond that. Ariadne has excellent, if stress-inducing, timing, or so it seems, as I've no idea when she woke." Eames pauses, then adds, "You'll have to ask her if you're wanting to know what happened to Cobb."

Arthur nods, moving his eyes back to the window; he'd stopped to watch Eames during his recounting of the events in the third level, but now he fixes them on the empty alley outside the warehouse and the empty rooftops. He doesn't comment on any of it; all he knows about Dom is what Ariadne had also told Eames- that Dom had stayed behind to search for Saito. And he honestly does have every belief that if anyone can make it out of Limbo again, and bring someone else back with them, it's Dominic Cobb. This is based on solid reasoning, of course- Dom is the only person ever to have succeeded in returning before.

He also doesn't comment on how Ariadne seems to know all of these things about his long-time business partner, the man he's known for years, followed around the world, risked his life for. All the things Dom brushed aside, when Arthur questioned them, calling them nothing- he seems to have shared them all with Ariadne so easily. He doesn't mention how that's bothered him. How much Dom's risking all of their lives without so much as a word about it had bothered him.

No, he doesn't have anything to say to what Eames had described. Instead, he recounts his own experience in the second level, very briefly. "I took care of the guards and, once we missed the first kick, had to find a way to drop you all while you were in free fall. It was a conundrum. But the explosives and the elevator were very helpful."

He sets the butt of the rifle down on the cement. "Yusuf's timing could use some work." Not to mention his driving.

“You don’t say,” Eames says, halfheartedly feigning surprise. The point is made; jokes might be underappreciated in present company, but blatant sarcasm is never misunderstood, just ignored. For all the troubles with this job, Yusuf seems to have had the least difficult job of it, and the poorest timing. To be fair, on the other hand, he was working alone, and not used to actual field work. Nor had he expected to be chased after immediately by trained projections. And a train.

But it had worked out- sort of- and Eames doesn’t blame the man. No, most of the blame Eames is doling out is being handed straight to Cobb, who hadn’t informed them of the danger he’d put them all in, not to mention the extra dangers he seems to have brought along with him.

Still, Cobb is gone for now, and Saito with him, and Eames is having a difficult time keeping blame balanced with worry when everyone else seems to be fine… for now. Better to focus on other things, such as Arthur’s adventures in the second level. Creating a kick of his own with an elevator and explosives. Very clever.

“How very nearly creative of you, Arthur dear,” he says, obviously rather impressed by the idea. “Off-the-cuff and all. Or had you pre-planned that eons ago?”

"It was actually plan X," Arthur retorts, even though it had been nothing of the sort. He'd been presented with a problem, and he'd solved it. "I'm well aware that coming up with creative solutions to quandaries on the spot is not my forte, Eames. I leave that to those of us with _imagination_."

His expression, previously perfectly still, may now be the slightest bit annoyed. But it doesn't change as he adds, stone-faced, "I prodded all of your floating bodies down the hallway with the enormous stick I pulled out of my ass. Sitting down was so much easier after that."

Most people would probably feel just the slightest bit poorly about the annoyance on Arthur’s face, or the implication that he knows what Eames had said about him to Cobb (as though Eames wouldn’t repeat the very words to Arthur’s face). Eames, fortunately for him, is not most people. He doesn’t feel particularly bad about anything Arthur has to say; rather, the unexpectedness of the point man’s humorous retort gets a surprised laugh out of him.

Prodded them all down the hall with the stick he pulled out of his ass. Glorious. He seems to have found a sense of humor in there, as well; perhaps the stick was stifling it.

Calming down quickly, although his eyes are still glittering with amusement, Eames fights the urge to reach over with less-than-gentlemanly intentions as he says, “Normally, I’d say having an _easier_ time sitting down is not what you should be aiming for, darling, but in this case, I can do nothing but applaud your efforts.”

That actually earns him a half-smile from the normally implacable point man; Arthur deliberately meets Eames' eyes, making sure his amusement is noted. It is rather noticeable that his expression has changed from its usual stoicism; he's trained himself to at least be more difficult to read than the average person because the easier you are to read, the easier you are to con. He's not a con man; he's under no delusions. But he wouldn't like to be on the end of a con, either. "It seemed like an inopportune moment for anything else," he observes.

His eyes are on the road outside again, by this point, but his mind is entirely on something else. "What was in the safe?" he asks after a moment. "Anything besides the will?"

Immeasurably pleased by wringing a bit of humour from the other man, Eames leaves the banter at that, resuming his own inspection of the landscape outside the window until Arthur speaks again. Ah yes, the safe. Eames, himself, had been highly interested in the contents of the safe, despite the fact that the object of the entire job was, for once, _not_ to get inside the thing, but to let the mark have at it. Call it interest in psychology, wanting to be certain they’d completed the job properly, or just plain human curiosity, but if Eames couldn’t help but wonder.

Lucky thing, he supposes, that the third level was _his_ dream, and he’d stayed behind (and lived) long enough to see Fischer go through with it. He can’t blame the point man for his interest, considering. “A pinwheel,” he says after a moment, thoughtful. There is a pause, but then from within his coat, battered and soaked as it might have become, he produces the now-tattered picture he’d taken from Fischer’s wallet.

He hands it over to Arthur, raising an eyebrow. Arthur hadn’t had a chance to see it, but Eames knows the photo well. A young Fischer and the pinwheel he’d ostensibly made, his father in the background, a father-son Kodak moment if ever there was one. “There are few safer bets than assuming a rich man will have singularly terrible unresolved issues with his father. All Fischer wanted was a bit of approval. Hell, we seem to have done the bloke a favor.”

Raising his brows with more appreciation than he'd admit to, Arthur nods. It's interesting, and Eames is right; if they've done Fischer a favor with the inception, then good for the other man. He doesn't know if he'd have anything so meaningful in his own safe, though; everything would probably be written in the form of reports. A file folder, maybe. All the shit that happened to him when he was younger, the stuff he doesn't talk about. No need for anyone to see that.

"I wouldn't know about rich men and their fathers." His voice is mild, but then he reaches over to hand the photo back, arching a brow at Eames. He knows as much of Eames' background as Eames makes it possible to research, through contacts and other means, because that is what Arthur does. He makes it a point to never be surprised. But Eames' history is, beyond a certain point, very much an unknown, although he's made a few hypotheses based on the man's accent, his obviously extensive education, his preference for the most hideously tacky shirts ever created, which _has_ to be an intentional effort... "Personal experience, there?"

“Oh, yeah,” Eames says easily, reaching over to take the photo back from him without hesitation. It is safe to assume, Eames knows, that Arthur knows as much about him as can be found out. It is also safe to assume that the point man will be on the look out for more information about such things; information, after all, is his job. But Eames has never made it easy to crack the mystery of his background, no matter how perceptive Arthur or anyone else is.

Tucking the photo back into his jacket, Eames raises an eyebrow in return, sending the other man a smile, and it’s impossible to tell if the smile is put on or genuine. Maybe they’re one and the same. It hardly matters to Eames, half the time; after all, right now, they’re in a dream. Nothing is genuine. He fits right in.

“Even today I yearn for the old bastard’s approval,” he says, without hesitation, and leaves Arthur to determine if he’s putting it on, attempting some dry wit in an effort to put a stop to the other man’s prying, or, unlikeliest of all, telling the truth.

Arthur's brows go up once again, and he nods slowly, accepting that as either truth or not. He's not likely ever to know, but he notes something along the lines of 'made sarcastic comment in reference to father's approval' in his mental file entitled _Eames_. Then he shuts that file drawer with a quiet *click,* not particularly wanting to push.

One corner of his mouth does crook upward slightly, the second time this has happened in as many minutes. "Well, if your taste in shirts is meant to be a 'fuck you' to your old man, that's actually a relief." The man's fashion sense is usually approximately equivalent to that of a loan shark or bookie. Maybe a pawn shop owner.

Arthur receives a half-hearted glare for his efforts, but the amusement is obvious in the forger's expression even as he does so. Anyway, Eames should know better than to bother glaring at the point man; Arthur is, after all, the master of glaring, if his response to _everything Eames says_ is any indication. Forcing glares out of the point man has always been one of Eames' favorite pastimes, when they've worked together. It's almost too easy. Almost.

He moves on to feigning a wounded expression, a hand over his heart. "Your distaste wounds me," he says dryly, obviously not even slightly bothered by the jab at his taste in clothing. Wouldn't be much of a 'fuck you,' would it, allowing his hypothetical father to have any sort of reverse control over his clothing choices? But Eames doesn't say that, not particularly wanting to go into great detail regarding even his hypothetical father. His shirts are a much safer topic. "You could learn a thing or two from me, love, I'm beginning to suspect you sleep in a shirt and tie." He pauses. "Hold on, you actually are doing that, as we speak."

Arthur casts around for a snappy comeback to that, but it takes him a few seconds too long, a few seconds during which he can't completely repress his amusement. True enough- he is indeed sleeping in a shirt and tie, and it's certainly not the first time. "Touché," he says, nodding and still smiling slightly.

And then, because he feels like it's only fair to return some of the harassment, sexual or otherwise, that Eames has doled out to him since the day they'd met, he raises a brow, expression blank once again, and very gravely asks, "Do you spend a great deal of time thinking about what I wear to bed, Mr. Eames?"

To call the smile that graces Eames' face after that question 'wicked' would be a vast understatement. Not only had there been a moment during which the cleverness of his response was appreciated, but he had wrung actual _amusement_ from the point man; Eames would have been happy enough with that, maybe called it a day (unlikely, considering how little there is to do with his time at this point). But this? Thirty responses, all of varying degrees of inappropriateness, run through Eames' head in half a second.

It's a sad thing that sitting as they are, Eames can't run a foot up Arthur's leg, because he absolutely would, disregarding any violent reaction he'd receive for it as unimportant next to the benefit of that split-second look of absolute shock on Arthur's face before he goes and hides it again. The point man always does, loving to be in control of his expressions as much as everything else, but Eames adores that moment just before he catches himself. Maybe the forger just can't help evaluating the minuscule movements and mannerisms of the people around him, but it's little gems like that that make harassing the hell out of dear Arthur so entertaining.

"Darling," Eames drawls a moment later, and his voice is nearly a purr as he purposefully holds the other man's gaze, the gesture noticeable because it is rather uncharacteristic. "You've no idea."

Had Arthur believed himself capable of blushing, he undoubtedly would have done so, then, swearing all the while. As it is, he's forced to break eye contact (and it is unusual that he's the one to do so), looking to the side for a second while he attempts to formulate a response to that that doesn't sound like either a come-on or an insult.

It really is unfair, and the point man has had that very thought many, many times during his acquaintance with Eames. The forger has made a point to harass him, make so many comments and quips that would, were it anyone else, definitely indicate that the forger was actually flirting with him. But this is Eames, who has made it his life goal to get a rise of any sort out of Arthur, and were Arthur to actually respond to any of it... well, he'd never, never hear the end of it.

Not for liking men, he thinks. He likes both; if Eames is aware of that, Arthur doubts the harassment would ever extend to that. It's never really seemed to Arthur to be such a big deal, which gender he sleeps with. He's not one for extended relationships, but he thinks Ariadne is cute, can certainly appreciate her attractiveness. Dom, too, although every observation he's ever made of his friend and business partner is that Dom Cobb is straight as an arrow. Eames... hell if Arthur knows. But it's a risk he is not willing to take, that the other man might actually mean all of his teasing as flirtation. Not when the odds point, very highly, to all of his harassment being just that, harassment.

Arthur doesn't need to be teased any more than he already is, or for Eames to have to tell him that no, he hadn't actually meant all of it. Or worse, for the forger to go along with it, if Arthur actually said something, because he felt... obligated, after all the flirting. Hell, Arthur doesn't know. But he's given this a great deal of thought over the years, each time he sees the man, and each time he comes to the same conclusion, that it's a much better choice to retreat and focus on work.

"You're right, I'm sure I don't," he retorts, eyes returning to meet the forger's squarely, almost challengingly, and expecting Eames to be the one to look away, this time.

Sure enough, Eames does exactly that, never having been one for extended eye contact in the first place. But not so quickly that he doesn't have a moment to watch Arthur, almost questioningly. Eames is up for any sort of challenge, well, within reasonable boundaries of course, but he's always known when to back off. Poking and prodding at Arthur is a load of fun, he won't deny the likely childish glee he gets from discomfiting the constantly collected point man. But there is a point where harassment in good fun turns into the sort of harassment that is likely to get him shot or beaten bloody, or worse, turned down and never spoken to again.

Eames is, as always, mindful of business relationships. To actually attempt to make a pass at Arthur could end so poorly that they would never be able to work together again. Eames is the best there is at his job, true, but a forger is not always necessary for the jobs Arthur and Cobb take, and they, too, are the best at what they do; they could make do with the second best. There will always be someone else ready to step up and take his place. Eames is wary of taking that risk, of losing contacts and future paychecks. And wary, too, maybe just slightly, of truly discomfiting the point man to the point where he drops from "annoyance" to "disturbance" and all ground gained, on a personal level, lost.

So, the forger's eyes drop down and to the side, then slide over to look out the window as he lounges a bit, wondering what Arthur would do if he were to follow through, and it is not the first time he's wondered. A fascinating study, Arthur the point man has always been, his reactions, his always-precise mannerisms. Eames wonders if that is why he is so very interested in the man, or if it really is simply that he is an easy mark when it comes to harassment. "A pity," he says with the slightest of sighs. "I might have elaborated."

Arthur can think of no reply that doesn't sound entirely inappropriate, and so he remains quiet for a moment, although he does smile slightly, fixing his own eyes on the window again, as well. Still nothing to see, out there. They appear to have hidden themselves quite well.

"And what? Waxed poetic on cotton pants and undershirts?"

The retort slips out of him, entirely unbidden, nearly a minute too late, the thoughts somehow forming themselves into words without his permission. But now that he's committed himself to it, even without intending to, he's obligated to follow through, and he does, snorting quietly and attempting to change the subject back to something at least a bit less... uncertain. "There's nothing wrong with dressing professionally, anyway."

A smirk reappears on Eames’ face at the first question, and isn’t quashed by the time Arthur moves on, obviously changing the subject as best as possible after that. Eames raises an eyebrow more at the question than the change in subject, interested despite himself. Or maybe because of himself. Eames isn’t entirely certain, nor does he particularly care.

Still, he allows the change in subject, briefly. “Of course not, when you’re a professional. But who, Arthur, who I ask, is professional all the time?” Here Eames points at him, eyeing the point man again before glancing back out the window. “Not even you.” And yet, the suits and the ties, all the time. It strikes Eames as thoroughly restricting, which suits Arthur well.

After that comment, though, Eames can’t help himself. “And as for waxing anything at all, I suppose that all depends on how lenient your definition of ‘poetic’ is.”

That earns him another snort, but Arthur doesn't reach up and loosen his tie. No, that would be giving in to the impossible man. "I'm dressed professionally whenever I'm on the job, whenever I'm working, and I'm always working." Thus, he's always dressed professionally. More than that, however, it's... well, it's his armor. He can control his clothes, and how he appears to other people. It sends a message of competency, of someone who knows what he's doing and does it well.

And speaking of waxing... well. What can he possibly say to _that?_ "You know me, Mr. Eames. When am I ever lenient?" He pauses a beat. "Were you considering waxing on something else?" Very deliberately, the response could be interpreted as him not realizing the meaning or... knowing fully how it could be taken.

Eames’ smile turns sharply amused at that, and he returns his gaze to the point man, putting his head in his hand as he regards Arthur, one eyebrow raised. Was he considering waxing on something else? Well, certainly he was. Whether or not he’d expected Arthur to rise to the bait, if you will, is another matter entirely. Indeed, this game has been rather hit-or-miss when it comes to the point man, resulting in either scorn or reserved amusement.

This response is certainly nearer the second, but doesn’t quite hit it on the mark as per usual, and Eames is dangerously interested. Interested to see how far he can push, yes. And to see how much Arthur is willing to push back. That, and Eames would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he wondered if perhaps pushing too hard could result in something favorable. And Eames might make a living out of lying in one fashion or another, and would never claim to be particularly truthful to himself, but he has never been unwilling to admit to himself when he wants something. Or some _one_.

“Well, well,” he says slowly, watching Arthur, “Perhaps I was, but this is all in my imagination, sadly. Which admittedly is extremely good, but I’ve no basis for comparison. I blame constant professionalism.”

"Someone has to maintain it." Arthur watches him right back, dark eyes meeting lighter. This time, neither looks away, and Arthur fights back a wave of... something. Uncertainty, maybe. He doesn't like to be uncertain. He doesn't like chance, doesn't like to enter into any game he doesn't already know the outcome of. Gambling is not his pastime.

And this, this is a gamble. But finally, the frustration wins out. "And what exactly would you do, Mr. Eames, if one of these days I tell you that you should make good on your damned innuendos?" Eames is staring at him, now, and Arthur gives himself a somewhat triumphant pat on the back for being able to surprise the forger.

But his courage gives out after a beat or two, when there's no response, and sucking it up, he shrugs, leaving the semi leaning against the wall and standing gracefully, the lean muscles of his back (and backside) highlighted by his slacks. "All talk, after all." Turning on his heel, he starts back across the room to the stairs. Well, even if that gambit failed, at least he's fairly certain that he's actually won one over Eames.

See if he ever gambles anything again. Fuck this shit.

Still seated next to the window, Eames stares after him as he walks away, for once barely taking note of the other man’s stride, or, more importantly perhaps, any part of his anatomy that Eames would normally allow himself to stare at blatantly, unashamed. Right now, though, Eames is a bit too distracted by what the other man had just said to appreciate his walking away.

Well. That had been unexpected. To say the least. The point man, it would seem, has finally hit the boiling point. And here Eames had begun to despair that that day would never come.

Arthur makes it to within a yard of the stairs before suddenly, Eames is on his feet as well, covering the distance between them in only a couple long steps to catch the point man. Arthur may not be a gambler, but Eames at heart is nothing but, and even knowing that a few minutes ago he had told himself he’s not going to push the other man that far for fear of damaging business relationships… that legitimate worry is shunted aside in the hopes that the other man isn’t fucking with him. Metaphorically speaking. This might become a very uncomfortable week-long wait, should he be placing a losing bet, but Eames is willing to risk that against the chance that that wasn’t simply a taunt meant to pay him back for his constant harassment.

Willing to risk it enough that, sure that Arthur can hear him coming, Eames catches him just a moment before he makes it to the stairs, grabbing the other man’s arm. Arthur stops; Eames doesn’t put any real pressure on the arm to force him, wouldn’t instigate a physical confrontation, but he stops anyway, and Eames yanks on it just enough to force the point man to turn around or pull his arm away.

He turns, looking stiff; Eames isn’t surprised by that, and doesn’t let it deter him. “This,” he says, voice low as he gives the simplest of answers, deciding that in this case, actions speak _much_ louder than words. And so before Arthur can even consider responding (or throwing him down the stairs), Eames has him crowded back against the wall next to the stairway, and promptly attacks the point man’s mouth with his own.

Startled and yet not, Arthur does still take a moment to process this before he makes an incoherent, low noise, and suddenly begins returning the attack with one of his own. Arthur kisses the way he does everything else, with purpose, skillfully and without hesitation; one of his hands reaches up to tangle none too gently in Eames' hair, holding him in place.

They duel back and forth, fighting for control of the kiss for long minutes, and even though he could probably dislodge Eames from where he's holding him back against the wall, Arthur doesn't even try. Nor does he argue when deceptively large hands move to the collar of his plaid shirt, undoing the buttons with alacrity. His own mouth moves to Eames' jaw as he loosens and then unknots the other man's tie.

They're both so absorbed by this that even Arthur doesn't hear, or at the very least pays absolutely no attention to, the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs next to where they're standing, still pressed up against the wall.

The footsteps make it to the top of the stairs, and Eames realizes, half a second too late, that that sound means someone is approaching. Unfortunately for said interloper, that is exactly the moment that Arthur's mouth finds a certain spot nearing Eames' ear further up his jaw that causes the forger to make an indecent sort of quiet gasp that borders on a moan. This explains, of course, the reason Ariadne's face is bright red the moment she peers around the stairway to find the two men well on their way to removing ties and shirts, not to mention the very obvious placement of two very eager mouths.

"Oh," the architect manages to sound both shocked and horrifically embarrassed as she blushes fire-engine red, which strikes a less-than-perfectly coherent Eames as adorable suddenly. Her voice comes out almost as a surprised expulsion of air than any real comment, but even quiet as it is, it's enough to dislodge them from one another to stare, in varying shades of embarrassment (which is to say, Arthur appears embarrassed while Eames does not and is unlikely to start), at Ariadne.

A stammering, madly blushing Ariadne. "I, uh-- s-sorry I was just checking-- I'll be... somewhere else," she finishes in a mumble, the blush creeping down from her cheeks to cover her neck and probably lower, Eames decides, even now unable to ignore the way her eyes slide to the side in nervousness, the way she eyes Arthur several times more than she eyes him, the uncomfortable, nervous energy that doesn't let her decide on one thing to do with empty hands. But interesting as her reactions might be, Eames can't even focus on that, because a glance over at Arthur proves that yes, his shirt is still half-open, the first time Eames has ever seen the point man even slightly disheveled (it's charming as hell), and though it's impossible to tell if his eyes are any darker than normal- he has intriguingly dark eyes- his lips still look impossibly inviting, and Eames can't help but lick his own a little, finding them (right along with other things) tingling maddeningly.

Luckily for the sensibilities of everyone involved, he supposes, Ariadne has the good sense to turn on her heel and beat a hasty retreat. Maybe not the most graceful exit, but Eames will give credit where credit is due: she's young, but that was handled rather maturely. Not even a bit of giggling involved. Which is good, because Eames does not feel even a little like giggling would be appropriate at this particular moment. He glances back over at Arthur, wonders if the man has ever giggled, decides asking would result in violence, and instead mumbles in an unintentionally hoarse voice, "I rescind all comments regarding her excellent timing."

Arthur doesn't comment on this, being far too busy feeling like a complete and utter asshole. Of course, Eames has no idea (and might not care even if he did) that Arthur had kissed Ariadne on the second dream level, but Arthur certainly knows he had. _Ariadne_ also certainly recalls that little detail. It had been a whim, to see if he could, the sort of urge he so rarely gives into... but now has, twice, during the course of this job.

He's not sure what to think about that. All he knows, however, is that this can't continue. Not now, when he's not sure if he'd hurt her feelings. She likes Cobb, yes, but that likely doesn't have much to do with seeing someone who'd kissed you suddenly kissing someone else, just a few hours later. Doing a bit more than kissing someone else, that is.

He steps past Eames, dragging a hand through his hair, completely forgetting that his shirt is still half-undone. "Shit."

Not surprisingly, this gets Eames' attention, and the forger turns to watch Arthur move away. It wouldn't have taken that one word to catch his attention, after all; now that his brain seems to be coming back on-line, Eames notes with one eyebrow raised the way Arthur is standing, the non-expression on his face not enough to hide the fact that he hasn't noticed that his shirt is nearly undone, that he'd just mussed his own hair, or that Eames is blatantly staring at him the way he would stare at a mark, evaluating.

Eames, though, notices all of these things and more, and manages to look both composed and disheveled at once as he regards the point man, as though he'd intentionally rolled out of bed that morning in Browning's suit, looking like he'd been halfway to pleasantly tumbled. Arthur looks halfway there himself, Eames can't help but note, and is sad to realize that this reaction means that there is no way he's going to get to do anything about that.

It hadn't been that they'd been discovered, Eames determines, recalling the way Ariadne had glanced at Arthur twice as often as she'd glanced at him. It was the fact that it had been _Ariadne_ doing the discovering. Not really allowing himself time to formulate an opinion on that besides wondering if Arthur is really unobservant enough not to have noticed the enormous torch the young architect is carrying for one Dom Cobb, Eames takes a moment to halfheartedly fiddle with his tie, which does nothing really to straighten it but gives nervous hands wanting to reach for the other man something to do that isn't reaching for his totem.

"Ah," he says succinctly, and somehow with that one syllable it's obvious his grasp on the situation is better than Arthur might have assumed. "That's my cue to exit stage left, then."

Arthur grimaces, still facing away from the forger, but after a moment he shrugs slowly. "Yeah, I guess so," he says, lowering his head and rubbing his left temple. Neither moves beyond that, however, until Arthur takes one step forward, away from Eames. Then another, and another after that, until his feet have carried him all the way back to the window, while the forger is still next to the stairwell.

He listens until he hears Eames descend the stairs, and he knows he's alone; he reaches up to start to re-button his shirt, but then stops himself again, hands falling to his sides and the plaid of his shirt still framing a rather large V of exposed skin over his chest. He shoves off his leather coat, finally, the material _still_ ruined, and nearly throws it to the side.

It surprises even him when his fist hits the wall, but the _crunch_ and the accompanying pain are satisfying in a bloodthirsty sort of way. Enough that he does it again, and then again, and again, until his arm is going through the movements automatically and he may or may not be picturing Cobb's face instead of the bloody spot on the plaster. And maybe his own, as well.

When he pulls back, desperate energy thus vented (at least for now), the knuckles of his right hand are a bloody mess, but he does feel a bit better.

  
Hours- a day? Eames' inner clock is thoroughly confused at this point, as he imagines most of theirs are- later, the forger finds himself in the small kitchen he'd discovered, several rooms back in the most secure area of the warehouse Ariadne had designed. The Architect herself has been keeping her distance, and Eames can't say he blames the poor thing, although it is nice to note that she hasn't been hostile to him, just awkward. So she'd remained in one of the other rooms with Yusuf, reading or drawing or something or other, and once when Eames had bothered to check, playing some sort of game that involved what seemed, to him, highly complex rules and scoring system.

Notably, the point man had never come back down the stairs after Eames had left him to it. Eames realizes that he probably won't feel he _should_ unless someone relieves him of his self-imposed post, but considering that was what Eames had gone up there to do in the first place before, the odds of him doing so again are currently at below 0% (mathematics: still not his strong suit).

No, Eames is content to leave Arthur to it, and so finds himself alone in the kitchen, a glass of whisky (scotch to the uncultured Americans in residence, though this was undoubtedly furnished by Yusuf's mind) in one hand and a spatula in the other, humming the theme from _Carmen_ to himself. He had the good sense to take off his jacket before rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows and loosening his tie, and thus finds himself only slightly covered in flour and not caring in the slightest.

In normal circumstances, attempting to cook while inebriated would be a terrible idea. However, as he is currently dreaming and therefore not even slightly inebriated no matter how much he's had to drink, Eames can only assume that scotch and pancakes is the best idea he's ever had, right after that first time he thought that perhaps he'd give wooing that pretty girl over there a go.

Inflated sense of self-worth notwithstanding, the pancakes do seem to be turning out wonderfully, which Eames supposes only makes sense, as they wouldn't likely be quite so perfectly round outside of a dream. Especially not when you make the things from scratch. Still humming, Eames finds himself wondering if this means Yusuf is a bit of a cook, or if perhaps it's just the chemist in him, then wondering whether or not he should offer a pancake or two to the man himself, then wondering how _many_ pancakes he could make before he drained the bottle of drink entirely-- anything, he deliberately does not notice, to keep from formulating an opinion on what may or may not be romantic interest between the point man and the architect. His mind just slides away from that subject, back into comfortable waters, the way it does when he's playing a role: Browning, that lovely woman, anyone.

It's simple. He just thinks to himself, _Eames would not care about this_ , and so he doesn't. But he does care about the pancakes. And about getting this song out of his head.

Arthur, on the other hand, cares quite a lot. And so when he finally gives in and stalks back down the stairs, hand still bloody and fingers definitely sprained if not broken, it's quite some time later (the sun is not an accurate form of measurement, but his internal clock, usually reliable even in dreams, tells him it's been nearly the equivalent of a day). He walks past the kitchen, pauses, backtracks a step, and eyes the rather impressively tall stacks of pancakes, and what appears to be two separate empty bottles of single-malt.

And abruptly feels like even more of an asshole. Not that he's the reason for all of that... well, not one that Eames would ever admit to. Probably not even to himself. Arthur wonders when he'd decided to become a shrink in his own head, and then wonders if this week really is going to drive him nuts. Things are moving in that direction.

Eames himself is standing near the stove, and Arthur continues on before any conversation takes place, refusing to be deterred from his self-appointed mission. He steps into the room where Ariadne is talking quietly with Yusuf. "Ariadne, do you have a moment?"

She blushes a little when she looks up at him, but nods, and he manages a grim sort of smile for Yusuf, who resumes staring down at their game. Arthur's not sure what it is, but that's not important right now. He leads Ariadne out into the main warehouse, holding the door for her and then shutting it behind himself.

The warehouse is eerily silent, the only sound breaking the quiet being the rain pounding on the metal roof, and a persistent drip somewhere near one of the doors. Arthur finally breaks it, though, intent on his purpose, which is to have this talk without hurting her feelings. He's perfectly willing to take the entirety of the blame. "I'm not sure why I kissed you earlier," he begins with no preamble. He's spent a great deal of time considering everything he wishes to say to her. "I'm not often spontaneous. You're very beautiful, very good at your job, and I enjoy your company... I really have no other reason than that." He appears noticeably disturbed by this.

He also doesn't miss the faint sound of footsteps stopping on the other side of the door behind them, and barely refrains from rolling his eyes. The forger might be sneakier than Yusuf, but respect for privacy is not a concept to which Eames subscribes. Arthur is not surprised. "But I am very sorry if I've hurt you. That was not my intention in the least."

Ariadne spends a moment looking up at Arthur, but she doesn't seem to need to look at him very long, because she seems to have already made up her mind about him. Ages ago, in fact. She might still be blushing a bit, but she's not a child, and she didn't expect that one spur-of-the-moment kiss meant that they were soul mates and going to ride off into the sunset and get married. She was just... surprised, she supposes. Both times. And... yeah, hurt a bit.

"I know it wasn't," she says honestly, and bluntly, still watching him. She might be the new girl- even more so than Yusuf- but she thinks she's a good enough judge of character to know that Arthur didn't intend to hurt her. Not that that has any bearing on how she feels, but Ariadne isn't one to lay blame unfairly. And she'd have to be blind and a moron not to notice the... er, chemistry, between Arthur and Eames. She thinks she knows Arthur well enough to know that he hadn't planned any of this maliciously or anything like that.

Even now, he's just being honest, and... well, it doesn't hurt that he adds in that he thinks she's beautiful, and all of that. The blushing carries on thanks to that. "Arthur, you don't have to explain yourself. It's none of my business."

Arthur smiles very slightly. "I felt I owed you an explanation." She truly is lovely when she blushes, and he can certainly appreciate that. But then the smile turns a bit... pained. "Since you walked in on me with someone else a few hours after I kissed you." He prides himself on being a gentleman, and that was certainly not... gentlemanly. Not in the least.

And yet... despite his pain at hurting Ariadne, he does not regret kissing Eames. Eames kissing him. Whichever, whatever, do the details truly matter, in that? There had been a kiss, and then a bit more than kissing, and only his self-control prevents a physical reaction to the memory.

She's looked away from him, towards the door, and he grimaces again. "You believe he'll be all right. I agree- he will be." Or he won't, the clock will run out, and they will wake on the plane with two madmen. "But whatever is going to happen, there's nothing we can do about it right now. And I believe you could charm a few pancakes out of Eames without a great deal of difficulty." He's hoping for a smile, and he's rewarded, to his relief; as always, her honest amusement makes him want to smile in return.

It’s a touching moment, really, and Ariadne’s smile is genuine; despite any hurt she might have felt, it’s not a big deal, really, since- well, since she just was not expecting anything to happen between herself and Arthur. Not that she would _mind_ something… but… not only are the other things (people?) on her mind, she doesn’t want to get in between Arthur and Eames. So what hurt she’d felt is assuaged by Arthur’s gentlemanly apology, and they smile at one another for a moment, before finally moving to go back into the room they’d left Yusuf in.

The touching moment ends about then, because the door is opened to reveal Eames, flour on his cheek and spatula in hand, standing right inside the doorway, very obviously having been listening in and just as obviously not embarrassed at being caught at it. He didn’t even bother pretending to be doing anything else.

He doesn’t bother explaining, either, but rather simply points at Ariadne- the first through the door- with the spatula. “Are you two finished with your heart-to-heart, then? Because if so I’ve got thirty-four pancakes in there and I’ve run out of whisky so it’s on you lot to help a fellow out.” He eyes Ariadne’s small frame. “I expect you’ll have at least eight.”

Behind her, Arthur just shakes his head at the forger, declining to make the comment that he so terribly wishes to, that all the forger needs is an apron and he'd make the perfect picture of a drunken housekeeper. "Run out already?" he says instead, serious as always. "It's going to be a long week."

But luckily for them, they'll have pancakes to last them throughout, it seems. He and Ariadne trail after Eames, back to the kitchen, where Yusuf is already digging in. He resists the urge to elbow the forger as he passes him; it's not worth lowering himself to the other man's level, and he supposes... well, that while he, Arthur, might take exception to the idea of listening in on another man's private business through a closed door, Eames did have reason to want to know exactly what's going on between Arthur and Ariadne.

If nothing else, Arthur supposes he can take this as proof that the forger might be interested in more than flirting, as though what had happened earlier wasn't proof enough of that.

"You could have just asked," he points out in a low voice, standing next to Eames at the counter to fill his own plate. Confronted with food, he finds himself starving, suddenly, although he knows he should return to his surveillance post, since no one else is likely to be playing the role.

To that, Eames shoots the other man a look that would normally imply that Arthur had said something absolutely insane, actually pausing in his pursuit of a stack of pancakes to stare at the point man for a moment. Now, to tell the truth, Eames really doesn’t mind just asking people things outright, generally. But in this case, well, that would just have been ridiculous.

“What, and take all the fun out of eavesdropping?” he asks, then shakes his head, returning to his plate. He made these damn pancakes, and Eames is intent on eating as many as is physically possible, which god knows, could be quite a lot, as this is a dream. “You must be mad.”

Shaking his head, Arthur gathers his own pancakes and follows Eames to the table. Mad. Oh, of course he must be, because a direct question is just insane compared to the idea of letting people take care of their personal business without listening in on them.

Again, though, he reminds himself, he doesn't actually mind. Much. It saves him from having to make any sort of awkward explanation to Eames, who had been next on his list of uncomfortable conversations.

All in all, however, he's decided that more spontaneity would be a very bad idea on his part. Thus far, his plan to apologize to Ariadne has worked out spectacularly. When he does things quickly, all he does is create more problems, instead of solutions.

The four of them spend a few moments, after that, eating in surprisingly homey, comfortable silence before Ariadne looks up at Eames across the table, looking rather impressed. Impressed, but not too surprised, which is good for Eames’ self-esteem, at least. “These are actually really good,” she says, to the forger’s great delight, which takes the form of a smile and a pause in shoveling pancakes into his mouth.

How he manages to both shovel food into his mouth at insane speeds and look composed while he does it is anyone’s guess, but Eames manages, and the composure carries over during this pause as he replies smoothly, “There is no end to my vast array of talents,” and sends her a just-slightly-exaggerated wink. This receives a laugh, and Eames happily resumes stuffing his face.

At least until Yusuf finally notices something. “Oh, well done, Eames,” he says, and the annoyance in his voice would be more convincing if he paused for long in between bites as he stares at the empty bottles of single malt. “I had that hidden underneath the sink for a reason.”

“Was that reason a game of hide the whisky and Eames will seek it? No?” Yusuf glares. Eames’ only response, after that, is a smile.

"I thought the two of you were acquainted, Yusuf," Arthur comments, withholding his grin expertly. "Eames has a radar for anything with the label 'single malt'. Or any other type of alcohol." Like a bloodhound. With a week of nothing to do ahead of them... he's not shocked that the whiskey is already gone.

Less than a week, now, he suspects. Six days, perhaps a little less. And for those six days, he's going to do his best _not_ to think about all of those... varied talents of Eames'.

“That’s so kind of you, Arthur darling,” Eames says sweetly in response. Obviously Eames is not hindered by the same sense of gentlemanliness or restraint as Arthur. Just as obviously, what had happened… almost happened… begun to happen… between them has not changed a damn thing in the way the forger harasses the other man, which is probably just as well. Eames is certain no one would know what to do if he was suddenly pleasant and charming to Arthur.

A radar… perhaps the point man is right. Eames _did_ find the bottles with almost alarming speed. It helps that Yusuf had hid the stuff right where he hid the very same in his place, where Eames has been. “I see. I’m nothing to you but someone you keep in the kitchen and placate with cheap alcohol.”

Arthur turns to him, then, and stares at him for a minute before, very deliberately, raising one brow. Eames had said it, not him.

"If you're going to burst into tears over that, you might as well go right back in there." He nods to the kitchen, entirely straight-faced. If nothing else, he supposes he's an effective straight man... just, not technically. "Back to the stove where you belong."

Brief pause. "Be good and I'll go find the shackles."

Eames’ eyes practically light up at the very idea, like some perverse mixture of a child in a candy shop and a porn star. The fact that Arthur had said that is both hilarious and not surprisingly thrilling to the forger, who can’t help the evil grin that takes up residence on his face in response. Or, more accurately, does not _bother_ to help the evil grin.

Too bad, really, that Yusuf and Ariadne are still here. He does have a _bit_ of decency. Or, more accurately, pretends to have some, for their sakes.

But even the tamest thing Eames can think of is barely acceptable in mixed company. “Mmm,” he begins, and the noise is borderline indecent. And even though it is done, ostensibly, to accompany licking stray syrup off of his lips, the way Eames draws out that small action only serves to make the whole thing even less innocent. “What I wouldn’t do to see you make good on that promise.”

Across the table, Yusuf is blinking at them in startlement, and Ariadne is failing to hide a grin, cheekbones lightly flushed as she looks back and forth between them. Arthur decides that it's safest not to read into the expression in her brown eyes; he's not entirely certain that he wants to know what she's thinking, at the moment. With Eames already looking like the cat that ate six canaries, sitting right next to him, that way might lead madness.

Arthur's expression doesn't waver as he turns to eye the forger, although once again, one brow goes up. "You might have thought to add them to your level," he begins slowly, "but I doubt Yusuf thought to include restraints." Although they might be able to come up with something... He doesn't say that aloud, but his eyes flicker briefly over what he can see of Eames' torso over the table, so briefly that Ariadne and Yusuf, not facing him straight on, undoubtedly will have missed it.

Shrugging to indicate 'oh, well,' he adjusts his expression to 'pleasant' and returns to his pancakes, his attention outwardly leaving Eames for the moment. Not shockingly, however, he is still examining the forger's reactions out of the corner of his eye.

Eames doesn't hide the sigh that escapes him after that as he leans back in his chair a little, somehow managing to lounge in a kitchen chair without looking awkward or as though he's working at it. He doesn't miss the way Arthur had just looked him over, and he knows Arthur is fully aware that he'd seen it, because the point man doesn't do things without a purpose. The entire conversation is wonderful and thrilling in the way good banter always is, but at the same time, is thrilling in another way, because... well. Now Eames knows that he's not just harassing Arthur for shits and giggles, with no chance of anything coming of it. Now, there's _potential_.

Secretly, or maybe not so secretly, Eames wonders if there really is potential for this particular conversation, but decides that getting Arthur naked in the first place has to come before any attempts at shackling anyone. And good christ, that had better happen sooner rather than later, because although Eames has been at this for years, now that it's not just a game, a longshot, his patience is wearing thin.

So, the dramatic sigh, along with just the slightest shifting in his chair, the kind that makes it very obvious to someone sitting next to him (but not across from him) that all the discussed intentions have... affected him. "Damn you, Yusuf, always foiling my best laid plans."

"My apologies," Yusuf says dryly, not bothering to look up from his pancakes.

Arthur looks across the table at Ariadne, and rolls his eyes very much more obviously than he normally would; she giggles, and Arthur finds himself quite satisfied in terms of having distracted her a bit. Well, he supposes he should give Eames at least some of the credit for that, too.

Speaking of the forger... Slyly, he glances sidelong at the other man once again, his gaze directed downwards, this time, to where Eames had re-adjusted himself. He himself, of course, would never do something so obvious, but he can't deny that some sort of measure might become necessary, should this behavior continue on the forger's part.

Undoubtedly it will. He tries to be disappointed by that, but does not succeed, although he does manage to finish his pancakes. "Thank you for these, Eames." Credit where credit's due, of course. He's a fair man. Standing, he carries his plate over to the sink, even though it's only a dream. "I'll be upstairs. Someone should keep watch." He doesn't say it in a way that would make it seem as though he's trying to make any of them feel guilty, but simply as a statement of fact. And in truth, he doesn't mind surveillance... nor does he mind the idea of Eames joining him up there, should the forger be so inclined.

Arthur suspects that he will be.

Not surprisingly, Eames is very much inclined, although he leaves the point man to it while he finishes his own pancakes and then, for the hell of it, cleans up a bit, with Ariadne's help (he had been unaware of the fact that he had flour on his face until she'd pointed it out). They get on pleasantly enough; the architect seems content to overcome the awkwardness of earlier with cheerful discussion, and the forger is happy to carry on a pleasant, normal conversation without any subtext or deeper meaning. Especially because Ariadne is _thoroughly_ interested in just about anything to do with dream-sharing or extraction in general.

By the time she wanders off, done with her blushing but still thankfully distracted from thoughts of Cobb and Saito, Eames can see why Cobb seemed to have bared his soul to her. She's nosy as hell, but not, Eames decides, in a particularly bad way. Of course he sidesteps most direct questions, but that's not abnormal in their world. Not even slightly.

So, kitchen cleaned along with his hands and face, Eames finally wanders off himself, not too proud to follow after Arthur a second time. Not after the... conversation, earlier, at any rate. So, passing by Yusuf with a nod, Eames climbs the stairs towards the point man's lookout, his shirtsleeves are still rolled up to his elbows and tie still askew, one hand fiddling with a poker chip as he walks. He finds Arthur in much the same spot he'd found the man in the first time, the only difference being that this time the wall next to where he'd been sitting has dried blood and broken plaster to show for its troubles. Still unconsciously playing with the poker chip, Eames eyes this with one eyebrow raised for a moment, decides no response is the best response, and instead focuses on the man himself.

"You know, love, I had come up here before to relieve you," he says easily. It's not his fault that it hadn't really worked out that way. In any sense of the word.

Arthur's hand is still rather mangled-looking, but the pain has stopped throbbing for the most part, and he responds to Eames with a smile much less faint than those he'd managed previously. The expression is still more of a smirk than a simple expression of happiness, though, and it echoes Eames' very accurately.

"Did you," he says, and it's not a question; he leans back against the wall, glancing over his shoulder at the forger. His smirk deepens a little. "I don't feel very relieved."

After checking the gun, just for something to do with his hands, he sets it aside, letting his hands fall to the floor on either side of his hips. "So what's your plan this time?"

"Plan, plan," Eames says dismissively. "You know very well I haven't got much of one."

Which, as far as anyone can tell, is a bit of a lie; Eames is _perfectly_ capable, and even willing, of planning things quite well. Or at the very least, _participating_ in a plan. And, too, it's obvious that he often _does_ plan, because frankly, he's been after Arthur, on and off, for years now. Expecting anything to come of it or not, that's at least nominally planning. Not to mention being a forger, in itself, though certainly involving a measure of impromptu acting, involves a _great_ deal of planning. It's finding the balance between the planning and improvisation that Eames excels at.

Still, letting that go, Eames puts his hands in his pockets, done fiddling with the poker chip for now as he approaches Arthur's side of the room, where the very man sits, smirking at him. Normally, if a smirk dared grace the point man's face, undoubtedly Eames would want to smack it off (although this urge is more likely to hit Eames when Arthur is looking like an insufferable know-it-all). He is feeling no such urge right now.

Other urges, yes. Other urges abound. So he wanders over to slide down the wall, sitting next to Arthur when he's done and wondering if he could just skip right past all of the talk and get on to the good stuff. But then, he does rather enjoy that particular smirk on the point man's face. "On the other hand, I have had a while to consider the options." He pauses, then adds, quite seriously, "None of my tentative plans involve much clothing."

Completely unsurprised, Arthur doesn't look over at the forger, but continues staring straight ahead at the opposite wall, his face wiped clean of its smirk and returned to its much more common pensive expression. Very slowly, he nods, as though considering this at great length.

"I believe I would be amenable to those plans," he says after a short span of time. "I'll need a briefing first. A thorough one." It's a challenge, yes, and one that he hopes the forger will rise to. Spectacularly.

He does have his own plans, of course. Handily, they coincide. "I suppose you probably won't be interested in the details of _my_ plans. You hate my briefings."

“Only the boring ones,” Eames allows, although he deliberately omits whether or not he finds _all_ of his briefings boring. Being fair, truly, Eames doesn’t mind it much. Someone has to make certain that all of the team members are on the same page. He will admit that no one else is likely to do such a thing.

Even so, the details of _this_ sort of plan, Eames might not mind hearing. But though there are certainly benefits to forcing the point man to announce his intentions, harassment to the point of genuine annoyance is, at the moment, not Eames’ goal. And besides, there are better things to be done with their time. They might have an abundance of time to kill, true, but Eames does not have an abundance of patience.

The forger glances over at the point man, eyeing him speculatively for a moment, and then, leaning closer- just close enough that he’s past the point of being within Arthur’s personal space- warns, “My briefings are more demonstration intensive. I hope you don’t mind.” He is, after all, a visual learning sort of person.

Arthur's second brow rises to join the first, and he turns his head to face Eames, which puts them a good bit past the point where the forger had leaned in. It also puts his nose very close to the other man's ear, and he eyes the stubble on the forger's neck speculatively, recalling very well exactly where that spot on Eames' jaw had been located.

"Demonstrate away," he says simply, before leaning in, for once beating the forger with his timing, and bites down none too gently on that precise spot.

Though he’d been about to say something, Eames forgets all about it at that moment, surprise turning the breath he’d been taking into a quiet gasp that comes back out as an equally quiet sort of groan, expressing his appreciation for Arthur’s memory quite well, he thinks. Barely a minute of exploration, earlier, and the man has already found a weakness. Not that Eames minds. He is full of weaknesses that he would be thrilled to allow Arthur to exploit.

Wanting to make that very clear, Eames takes the opportunity presented by the other man’s sudden proximity to reach over and grab the lapel of his shirt, pulling him closer as much as the way they’re seated will allow, and picking up right where he’d left off: the buttons of that goddamned shirt. He has wanted to get that thing (in one form or another) the hell off of the point man practically since they met. And since he is not about to dislodge Arthur from what he’s doing oh-so-wonderfully with his teeth in order to invade his mouth again- at least not quite yet- now seems like a good time to follow through.

Arthur of course does his best to make this as difficult as possible, and not even intentionally- he's too busy with his own efforts, started by Eames' working on his shirt buttons, to remove the forger's tie and shirt, himself. The angle is not working, however, and so he hauls himself up off of the ground, ending up with one knee between Eames', crouched over the other man, his mouth never leaving its self-assigned position on the forger's neck.

When the forger gets his shirt unbuttoned (finally), Arthur shrugs it off impatiently, the plaid falling to the concrete somewhere behind him, and yanks off his undershirt immediately, mouth finally detaching from Eames' skin. He's back right away, though, taking initiative and beginning their second kiss just as the forger apparently gets fed up and nearly rips off his own shirt.

It's entirely not shocking that Eames does not wear an undershirt. It is equally not shocking that, just as Arthur had always thought, the forger is indeed built like a damned brick wall. Arthur is not complaining about either of these things, but at the moment, he doesn't even have the thought capacity to think at all.

Neither, it seems, does Eames, who had been _very_ interested in seeing Arthur sans the damn shirt and tie, but suddenly finds himself thoroughly distracted by the man’s tongue in his mouth and that, he decides, is no reason to complain. So, allowing some patience (since the shirt is now off for good and he will not allow it back on without some time to ogle), Eames instead focuses on other senses. Such as touch.

Now that shirts are removed, Eames’ hands are dangerously free, and he wastes no time in thinking about it before he begins a very thoroughly exploration of the point man’s upper body, snaking one arm around Arthur’s back to pull him as close as possible even though the man’s knee is already located in dangerous territory. It’s difficult to think at all, really, fighting again for control over the kiss even though Eames doesn’t know why he bothers (he wins either way, maybe it’s just that the fighting is fun), but he has enough brainpower left to feel thoroughly pleased to discover that he’d guessed correctly: Arthur is more lean muscle than anything else.

Of course he should have known (you’d have to be built that way to take on a few blokes in zero gravity and win), but checking him out every time he turns around and leering inappropriately at every possible juncture, sadly, did not give Eames the ability to see through the other man’s clothing. He’s not terribly upset about that at the moment, though, while Arthur is half on top of him and his hands have free range all over every one of those lovely muscles.

Things don't last long in the state they're both in, to say the least, and it's just a short while later that Arthur finds himself on his back on cold, hard concrete, staring up at the surprisingly well-defined ceiling. Eames is lying sprawled next to him, up against him, really, and the entire thing feels so surreal... more surreal than any fight he'd had in zero gravity, or any other insane experience he's had in a dream.

Well, even beyond the fact that he's never had sex in a dream before. This is definitely a first.

His limbs are limp and heavy, and he arches his back, trying to work out the kinks. "Well, shit," he says finally, voice hoarse. He's never complained to be romantic, and somehow he doubts that's what Eames is after.

That gets a snort out of Eames, who considers stretching as well but decides he is much too lazy to do any such thing, and so instead contents himself with watching _Arthur_ do so with half-lidded eyes. It’s the sort of sight that, were he not thoroughly spent for the moment, Eames would absolutely have to do something about. But instead, for now, he just takes in the scenery.

“Agreed,” he manages after a moment, voice equally hoarse. Christ. If only he’d known this was possible before now. At least now all of his harassment of the point man is vindicated. And somehow the week stuck here doesn’t seem so terrible, suddenly. They’re silent for a moment, but then finally Eames just can’t keep his mouth shut. “It’s really too bad Yusuf didn’t think to dream up shackles,” he says, but the seriousness of the statement is belied by the grin he can’t keep to himself. If he’d been the cat who ate the canary (or six) before, no one wants to know what the cat has gotten into _now_.

Arthur's brows raise a fraction, and he relaxes down against the concrete again, trying to summon up the energy to kick his pants off of his left foot, the only place they're still attached to him... and failing.

"You're the one with all the imagination." Christ, even his voice sounds tired. He feels boneless, and wants to sleep so, so badly... but he is already asleep. And with the sedatives they're under... no. No sleep would ever be normal, or safe. It's only a matter of convincing himself that he's only weary, but not sleepy. "I'm sure you could think of something."

Eames raises an eyebrow at that, but otherwise, does not move. He seems perfectly content to lie still for a while, equally tired and just as unwilling to fall “asleep.” He, too, knows the dangers that would pose. And after all the near-misses they’d had, with Saito and Cobb’s fates still unknown… Eames might be willing to throw himself into a dangerous plan if there’s no other choice, but he’s not particularly willing to put himself in outright danger for no reason.

Tiredness, in this case, is not a reason. He supposes he’ll just have to find ways to keep himself awake. “Translated, I believe you just gave me permission to let my imagination run wild.”

The grin nearly melts onto Arthur's face, and for once, his expression gives Eames' smug one a run for its money. Very deliberately he trails a slow, heated gaze down over the forger and then back up, dark eyes meeting lighter ones.

"I suppose I did," he says lightly. He doesn't move from where he's lying, still too exhausted to do more than simply remain in stasis, staying where he is until his energy replenishes itself. But the invitation, for when they're both recovered, is most definitely there.

Strangely, Eames finds himself somehow charmed by the way grinning transforms the usually straight-faced point man. The expression suits him, which is a pity, as he rarely allows any sort of expression at all. Maybe that makes seeing it more thrilling. Eames doesn’t know. He smirks and smiles all the time. It’s his job, more or less.

But less strangely, the way Arthur looks him over, very obviously, has a very expected reaction from the forger; suddenly he finds himself not quite as tired as he’d thought he was. His smile in reply is somewhere between an honest grin and a smirk, and Eames doesn’t try to hide it. Permission to let his imagination run wild? This might just be the best dream he’s ever had, barring the horrific beginning and the worry. He hadn’t been daring to hope that he wouldn’t have to fight for a repeat performance. He’d been perfectly willing to do just that, but Arthur’s willingness – more than- is secretly rather thrilling.

“And here I was, wondering how I’d keep awake,” he says lightly, already clearly less tired-seeming than he’d been a moment ago.

Arthur tries- he really, really does. But he can't keep other thoughts from encroaching in at that quip, and his grin fades a little as he looks away. Sleep means another dream within a dream, hell, could mean limbo for all they know, and when the thought of limbo hits him... all he can do is think of Dom, and of his closest friend, and leaving him at the bottom of that river.

"Shit," he mutters, for an entirely different reason this time, and drags a hand over his face, sitting up partway. What kind of a friend is he, honestly? Doing this, all this self-gratification (well, Eames' as well) when Dom is trapped down in limbo, searching for Saito?

A really shitty friend, that's what. Dammit.

Eames watches this silently for a moment, but… well. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what might be bothering Arthur. It’s bothering them all. It also doesn’t take a genius to know that it would bother Arthur more because Cobb is, very clearly, his friend. Where the rest of them are business partners or acquaintances, might even like one another, they aren’t like that.

Eyes fully open now, Eames takes that moment to stretch a bit before getting himself in a more comfortable position that doesn’t involve obviously attempting to taunt the other man.

“Before you say, I know it’s very much none of my business, but that has never stopped me from formulating an opinion before,” he says after a pause. “I know he’s your mate, but spending an entire week worrying incessantly won’t help either of them make it back. He knew what he was getting into.” Eames even manages to keep that sentence from sounding bitter or angry, even though they both recall that while _Cobb_ knew what he was getting into… no one else but Yusuf could say the same.

Arthur snorts, and he does not attempt to keep the bitterness from that sound. "I probably shouldn't be so worried," he says after a moment, feeling the urge to punch Dom returning. With a vengeance. All things considered, if they make it out of this job alive it's a very good thing that they'll all be going their separate ways for a while. Otherwise he might be tempted into actually hitting the other man. "I'd like to say he deserves it, being down there, after he lied to the rest of us."

But Arthur is unable to actually voice that thought and mean it. Maybe he's too good a man for that, still, even now. Maybe he's not strong enough to wish that on Dom. He might just be weak, at the core of it. Physical ability isn't everything, and he's been under Dom Cobb's wing for a long time. He's done other jobs with other teams, yeah, but when Dom called, Arthur came.

And yet in this life-threatening situation... Dom hadn't been honest with him. "I didn't want this job in the first place," he admits quietly after a moment. He could, would never say such a thing to Yusuf or Ariadne, but somehow, it's cathartic to say it to Eames. The thought makes him want to snort again. "I argued against it, until he'd said he'd done it before. He wasn't lying, and... I wanted to help him get back to the kids." He doesn't look down and back at Eames, but just keeps staring straight ahead at the wall across from them. "I would have gone with the plan, regardless of the risk of limbo. But he didn't tell me. He just played me. And you, and the others. Even Fischer. Risked all our lives."

His face twists, as though he's tasted something foul. "What kind of friend does that? Was the risk that I'd say no so great against everything I've followed him into before, without questioning a word?" It's not even the fact that he'd played with their lives, although that is, admittedly, a large part of it. But the crux of the issue is that Arthur has always trusted Dom with his life, to always have it all figured out and be honest with him. And Dom hadn't come through.

“I can’t say I know, Arthur,” Eames admits. He doesn’t know what sort of friend that is, except perhaps a poor one. But then, Eames doesn’t have any close mates, not in the way Arthur and Cobb have always seemed to him to be. He has friends here and there, yeah, and acquaintances. He likes people. But there’s no one that he would do as Arthur says he would do and go into a dangerous situation even knowing the risk for.

Before this, he _liked_ Cobb, sure. But now, well, if the man makes it out alive and intact, Eames will be glad he’s off to take care of his children or whatever the fuck else he’s got going on, because he will never be working with Cobb again, the end. “He’s obviously got his own issues.” This is said rather dryly. No one has forgotten the way his dead wife showed up and killed Fischer, or the train, or… any number of ways Cobb’s subconscious fucked them over. “If you hadn’t gone along with the job, there’s no way it would have been doable. Maybe the risk seemed great enough. Maybe the fact that you didn’t want to do it made him think you wouldn’t with eternity in limbo on the line.”

He shrugs. “Obviously he wasn't right about it with you, but he had to pay Yusuf to get him in and if he’d told me, I wouldn’t have come.” No shame there; Eames doesn’t bother lying. He’s straightforward about it. He has his limits, and Cobb obviously knew that. Eames still blames him, yes, but he can see why he did it that way, with him at least. But with Arthur… “Maybe he didn’t think you’d be willing to lie to the rest of us about it. Hell if I know. This whole thing has been one big cock-up and I am perfectly happy to blame him.”

"So am I," Arthur mumbles, which in itself is very strange. He never mumbles. He's not a mumbling sort of man. But here he is, being more honest with Eames, who is possibly the most aggravating human being living on the planet today, than he's been even with himself in... well, in a very long time.

Again with the surreality.

"I don't know if I would have been." His voice is thoughtful. "I wouldn't have thought it would be right to lie to you and Yusuf about it. Or Saito. And we weren't supposed to be taking Ariadne in the first place. I would have thought you should have known. But I don't know if I would have told you, then, if he'd confided in me." Now he looks back at Eames, who is watching him. "Now that he's lied to me, I'm not sure I'd follow him anywhere, on another job or at all. We did what we had to to survive, earlier, and he had the only plan that might have worked. He didn't give any of us a choice. Now..."

“Trust is a fickle lady and rather more important to extraction than most criminal efforts,” Eames says simply, just stating the honest truth. “If you can’t trust that a bloke won’t be keeping game-changing facts from you, there’s just too much risk to be jaunting around in such a malleable landscape as someone’s mind.”

Eames shrugs, gaze sliding off to the side again now that Arthur has turned to face him. He appears to be considering the other man’s back. “So there you have it. Cobb assumed this was his last job, as he’ll be off to take care of his children or thrown in jail. So the chance that you might not take the job, or you’d tell me and I’d _definitely_ not take the job, or Saito, or hell, even Ariadne, was too great. He didn’t need to keep your trust for another job and he needed you for this one.”

This is, not surprisingly, all said matter-of-factly, from the standpoint of an outsider who has, of course, studied both Cobb and Arthur thoroughly. It would be silly not to assume Eames turns the same sort of scrutiny upon colleagues as he does his marks. “In the end it’s all for his kids. Which I suppose is respectable, if one has children. But he does come across as a bit of an arse.” And by ‘bit of an arse,’ Eames means complete and total arsehole of unbelievable levels, which of course his sarcastic tone makes perfectly clear.

Arthur doesn't disagree, and the fact that he remains silent instead of immediately defending Dom speaks volumes with regards to his opinion on the subject. He does lie back down, but it's not the relaxed, boneless lounging that it had been a few moments before; rather, he appears very pensive.

"It must make things easier to work solo, and take jobs just for yourself, not have to worry about someone else." It's an observation, not a question. "Although I suppose, one way or the other, I'll experience that for myself soon enough."

Not sure whether he was intended to reply to the first comment, as it was not actually a question, Eames says nothing for a moment. In truth, he hardly knows to tell Arthur whether or not it is, in fact, “easier.” He has always worked alone, more or less, obviously he works with other people on jobs, but he has never been part of a “team,” business partners and friends, the way he and Cobb are. He has recurring colleagues, obviously, has worked _with_ Arthur and Cobb before, not to mention Yusuf and a few others.

But the difference is, if Cobb had called him up and said Mr. Eames, I have a job for you in which you enter someone’s subconscious and death means limbo, possibly for eternity, Eames would have told him to piss off. He chooses his jobs based on self-interest, the risk-to-reward ratio, and the challenge. Not friendship, respect, or a sense of responsibility.

Eames doesn’t share any of that with Arthur, assuming that if the point man isn’t quite aware of his bottom line by now, there is no need to share it with him. Eames is friendly and personable as any good con man should be, he is an artist and a bit of a drama queen, but when it comes down to it, he is pragmatic and out for himself. “Not necessarily, I suspect you could keep Ariadne around with very little effort. She’s quite fond of you, and you’re not likely to bludgeon her to death with spectres of your subconscious.”

"Ariadne should go back to school and finish her degree," Arthur says firmly. That much, he is certain of. He doesn't disagree with Eames; he's fairly sure that he _could_ convince Ariadne to stay with him. She's got the bug, now, the craving for dreaming. For creation. It's not going to be easy to put her off, but at least they have the mandatory two week 'gone to ground' period he'd assigned for after the job's completion. Just in case Fischer Morrow catches on to what they've done... are about to have finished doing.

He's fairly certain he can come up with a plausible excuse as to why she should return to her normal, civilian life. It isn't that she's not a good architect- hell, even Dom had admitted she's better than he is... was. It's the fact that he's not entirely certain he can handle corrupting someone as innocent as Ariadne. Not any further than she already has been.

He, Arthur, is beyond saving, frankly. So far gone that there's nowhere to go but onward. Eames is the same way, so far on the darker side of the line that there's no going back now. A week ago, Arthur would have said that Dom straddled said line, with a foot in both worlds. Now... he's not so sure. But Ariadne is nowhere near that point yet, and Arthur would prefer to keep her that way.

Besides, he doesn't want a tagalong, someone whom he'd have to teach until they became capable of handling things themselves, and that's what that would end up being, undoubtedly. No, if he wanted to work with someone again, it would have to be someone capable of handling themselves, both inside and outside a dream. Rigorous evaluations would need to be conducted.

To that, Eames only raises an eyebrow. Interesting, since Eames had been given to believe that Arthur was quite fond of Miss Ariadne, and vice-versa. On the other hand, being fond of Cobb has worked out so well for him thus far, perhaps he’s just disillusioned at the moment. Eames doesn’t profess to know. Arthur can be a tough nut to crack; not as tough as he thinks he is, but at the same time, if he’d been simple to get to know, Eames might have lost interest in him long before now.

And, well, perhaps it’s also a little true that Eames is purposefully not wondering about what might or might not be between Arthur and Ariadne. It’s none of his business, especially now that the job is essentially over. It’s bad news to be involved with someone you’re working with… disregarding what he and Arthur had just done. Well, Eames never said he didn’t have his own rules. Or break them.

“Right, well, silly me assuming that was her decision,” he says after a moment. Ariadne is, after all, a grown woman, technically. She still seems quite young to Eames, but perhaps that’s just the fact that she’s so new to all of this… and so amazingly innocent. But she’s also quite stubborn, if Eames isn’t mistaken. Convincing her to go back to school and finish her degree if she doesn’t want to… will be a challenge. “I wish you luck in convincing her otherwise.”

"It is her decision," Arthur retorts, the annoyance creeping back into his voice. Only very slightly, but still, it's there. Old habit by now, he supposes. Eames says something to which he disagrees, and it's learned behavior to fall into their old pattern of sniping at one another. It's odd, to try to stay out of that, but he's decided to keep the peace, and so he takes a deep breath, letting it out. "But that doesn't mean I want her to get involved in all of this. In what we do. She's barely touched the surface of it; she could still go back and have a normal life. One where no one will try to kill her on a regular basis."

He lets out a short breath. "The rest of us lost our innocence a long time ago. It would be nice if someone got to keep that." He pauses. "And I don't know if I'm up to playing teacher for however long it would take her to learn it all." It had been nice, as a change of pace, but... it's not generally Arthur's role, and he's not certain it's one he's comfortable playing. He likes to be free, unhindered, able to go where he wants and take the jobs he wants (even if most of those had been for Dom). So, maybe he's being a little selfish, but he'd never just leave Ariadne to her own devices to explore the criminal world, learn more about extraction and get herself killed. Is it a crime, then, not to want to take that on?

Though he suspects that Ariadne would be a quick study, Eames, for once, can’t argue with that. There’s no way _he_ would play teacher in that way, to anyone. No, thank you. And although Ariadne might be a quick study, there is a difference between understanding a thing and being able to do what must be done on a job. Eames isn’t certain Ariadne would be able to do _anything_ to get a job done, and at times, that is what you have to be prepared to do.

So on that account, Arthur is certainly right. She’s innocent, very much so, and the rest of them are all varying degrees of anything but. The difference here, between himself and Arthur, is that Eames doesn’t really believe that anyone can go very long without losing some of that innocence. Ariadne is, sadly, already on her way.

“Fair enough,” he allows after a moment, looking in the general direction of the boring, colorless ceiling. “She is very good at her job, but truthfully when it comes down to it, I don’t see her as much of a criminal anyway. Helping old ladies cross the street, yes. Stealing their purses, not so much.”

Arthur snorts, then, an honest, inadvertent; it's very close to an actual laugh as he glances over at the forger, rubbing a hand over his mouth. Yes, he had actually just made that noise. "Even you wouldn't rob an old woman's purse on the middle of the street." There's a pause. "Unless she looked really rich and as though she could afford it." And in that case, he's certain the forger would be going after something a good deal more valuable, unless said hypothetical old woman carried diamonds in her purse.

His gaze returns to the ceiling, as well. "She's addicted to it because of the creative aspects. It is fantastical, what I've watched her do, in dreams. I doubt even Dom folded Paris onto itself in his first shared dream. But I suppose you can relate to the artistic aspect."

He yawns a little again. "I can do it during a fight, awake or in a dream. Let go, and allow my instincts to take the reins. But that's the only time. Usually... I just... can't. I have to know everything that's going on, know what's going to happen next, or it's not... good." Swallowing, he keeps his eyes very firmly upward. "I've never understood how you could just... do things the way you do them, off the cuff. With little or no _specificity_. Without planning out every detail. There's so much possibility for error, failure."

Still rather surprised to have startled such an honestly amuse out of the normally implacable point man, Eames doesn’t even bother arguing with his quip about robbing an old woman’s purse in the middle of the street. He’s right, Eames wouldn’t. And if she looked rich enough to be useful, he wouldn’t go after the stuff in the purse, but rather something more valuable. Arthur is certainly right on that account.

As for the rest… Eames is surprised to be hearing any of that, too. But then again, he’s been surprised by hearing much of anything from Arthur, who though he is not as tight-lipped about his feelings on things as Eames himself, has never been particularly forthcoming with him. And he has _never_ admitted an inability to understand something. Never. Never once within earshot of Eames. In fact, every time _Eames_ has admitted something of that nature, Arthur has been all over him, metaphorically of course, which is a surefire way to get on Eames’ nerves.

Eames doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve the honor (well, he did _Arthur_ , perhaps that’s it), but he doesn’t taunt, for once. Even after the specificity comment. “That’s because you’re focused on the wrong word, Arthur. It’s not about the margin of error or the chance of failure, it’s about the _possibilities_. There will always be unknowns in a job. It’s your job to plan and minimize them as best you can. It’s my job to be one.”

There's nothing else Arthur can really say after that on that subject, so he doesn't try. He just nods; there's no way he would ever give voice to the fact that he's always... well, often wished he could be more impetuous. More instinctive. Frankly, more like Eames, not that he would ever admit that to the forger, even on pain of death. But he's long since resigned himself to the fact that he will never be capable of that sort of behavior, of doing anything without an obsessively-detailed plan, and he figures he might as well work with his strengths, instead of against them.

"Yes, and then you deviate from the plan, even your loose parameters of a plan, and my job becomes pointless," he mutters after a moment. "Try planning for your possible deviations, sometime. Not exactly fun."

“If I were to plan for my possible deviations, they wouldn’t be deviations, now would they?” Eames asks, sensibly he thinks. Of course this is accompanied by a completely shameless grin. He really can’t help himself. Teasing poor, dear Arthur is still as much fun as it has always been, only now he’s naked.

So naturally, the grin remains as he eyes the other man. “That’s why you are the man with the plan and I am not. Handy in a pinch, plan X, but I never get past the loosely-defined A. So no thank you, I will leave your job to you, as is the way of the world, because it is much more fun to deviate and make you work extra hard for your paycheck. Someone ought to keep you on your toes, darling.”

"Yes, God forbid my job be easy," Arthur mutters. So he's the stable, sensible one, who gets to have his dream levels be deeper down. It also means he gets to deal with guards in zero gravity. He's aware that this argument does not make a great deal of sense, even in his head, but... well. Screw Eames.

And not literally, this time.

Man with the plan. He doesn't dislike that. He does dislike being called Eames' 'darling,' but... possibly not when the forger says it in that tone of voice. Very similar to when he'd said it earlier in this dream level, actually, when he'd pulled out the grenade launcher and taken out six projections. The memory turns Arthur on a bit, and he looks over to the side, keeping his voice cool as ever. "I'm not your darling." But he might be asking for it.

Just a little.

Eames’ eyes widen just a fraction in response to this, as though this is legitimately startling news to him. He turns to look at Arthur for a moment, fighting back a smirk. “Are you not?” he asks as seriously as he can manage, but can’t keep his voice from coming out perhaps a bit lower than intended when he sees the look in the other man’s dark eyes.

All taunts and teasing aside, Arthur is a very attractive man, and he is lying there, quite naked, and Eames finds that his previously-depleted energy is making a comeback. Just then, he seems to recall being given permission to let his imagination run wild, and his expression goes from controlled to predatory in all of two seconds. In less than that, with no warning, he’s shoved off the ground and finds himself with one hand on either side of Arthur’s head, looming over him.

That was a challenge, Arthur had just issued. Eames adores a good challenge. “I didn’t call you ‘darr-lehng,’” he corrects, doing a not-surprisingly very good impression of Arthur’s indistinct, white-bread American accent. “I said _darling_.” This last, of course, is purred right next to Arthur’s ear, right before Eames bites down on his neck and does his best to close the rest of the distance between the rest of their bodies.

  
Arthur isn't sure how much time passes, this time, but they both seem to discover new, previously-hidden wells of energy and make use of them accordingly. The sun doesn't rise or set in this world, and Arthur finds himself wondering if Fischer will spend the equivalent of the next five or so days in his office, thinking it all one long workday. He also wonders if he has scrapes on his ass, but that's a bit less philosophical.

They've returned to sitting next to the window, some indeterminate (but large) number of hours later, when they hear footsteps on the stairs again. Brave Ariadne, Arthur thinks, raising a brow at Eames and sliding the window open a little further. He'd done it at first to rid the room of the musky smell of sex, which had permeated it for a good long while, considering how long a time they'd spent at it. But now, it's down further because (he pauses to glare again, but again, it has no reaction) Eames is smoking like a chimney.

"Thought you were on the patch, or the gum, or something." Someone knocks on the cement wall in the stairwell; obviously she'd waited a good long while until they'd stopped... er... making noise. "Come on in, Ariadne."

Ariadne appears when invited, sending them both a smile and doing a very good job of not looking nervous to be walking in on them possibly doing something she doesn’t want to see. She does, however, wrinkle her nose (adorably) at the smoke filtering out of the room through the window, but says nothing, to which Eames responds by smiling beatifically at her. Charming young woman, emphasis on the young, but a few more years on her and Eames thinks even the hardened criminals fearing for her innocent sensibilities won’t be able to keep away.

The smile remains in place as he responds to Arthur. “I might be, but this is a dream, love, no one’s lungs are in danger. You should be proud I’m doing it here and not up top, since it doesn’t count as falling off the wagon.” Or in his case, being bored with the wagon and wandering off. He and the wagon don’t always get along, which is why he is on the patch or the gum every other month.

“I thought it was quitting alcohol that had a wagon,” Ariadne says, sitting down across from them, conveniently placed so as to be away from the smoke.

Eames shakes his head. “Oh no. I’ll have nothing to do with _that_ wagon.”

"To the painful chagrin of your poor liver." Arthur rolls his eyes at the forger right on cue, the annoyed expression switching to a glower when the forger blows smoke right at him. He kicks out, catching the other man in the thigh, and receives a very satisfying yelp for his troubles.

Daring Eames to hit him back, he turns his attention to the architect, who is sitting close enough that she would most definitely be in the danger zone were Eames to attack. Not that Arthur has any intention of letting Eames come anywhere close to winning any physical confrontation. They've never actually fought before, but he's fairly confident that he would emerge the victor. Eames might be a brawler, and an impressive one (and definitely in a heavier weight class), but Arthur is faster, and his method of fighting is to incapacitate his enemy as quickly as possible, not brain them unconscious.

He smiles at Ariadne. "He's only been on the wagon for, what, a month, this time? Three weeks?" It's three weeks and four days, actually, but Arthur will not reveal that tidbit, nor how he came upon it (hacking into Eames' pharmaceutical records, heh). "Keeping busy?"

She shrugs, fiddling with the hem of her jacket, which is thankfully dry by now. "Yusuf is playing with chemicals. And he's sort of creepy about them. Talking to them." She rolls her eyes a little. "I needed a break, and it's been quiet up here for a while. It seemed safe." Now she sends them both something that greatly resembles a shit-eating grin, teeth included.

This receives something very close to a cackle from Eames, who predictably does not retaliate physically to Arthur’s kick. Of course, the key word there is ‘physically.’ He is not about to start an all-out brawl. Firstly, he is too classy for that. Secondly, the odds of losing are too high and besides, anything good that might come of that is negated by Ariadne’s presence, and he wouldn’t want her to be caught in the cross-fire, metaphorically.

“Ariadne, you _are_ a gem,” Eames says a moment later through a sigh as his laughter subsides. He’s completely forgotten about the wagon and whether or not he is on it in favor of the architect. Her smile turns rather pleased with herself, and Eames is a bit charmed despite himself. She is lovely and oblivious to it, and is all the more charming for that and the interesting mixture of creative genius and untried, innocent young woman. She is wasted, Eames decides, on equally oblivious, tortured Cobb. He can only hope she’ll get over that soon, for her own sake.

“And I apologize for Yusuf. He is a bit, isn’t he?” Eames of course knows Yusuf rather well, and doesn’t mind the man much at all. Though he had a part in keeping the effects of the compounds from the lot of them, Eames isn’t angry with him- he _did_ trust Cobb, and frankly, Cobb offered him enough money to make it worth it. Eames knows _Yusuf’s_ bottom line, and he can be trusted to stick to it.

It's Arthur's turn to grimace a little, but as he eyes Ariadne, he makes a mental note that she seems unbothered by his and Eames' activities despite the awkward situation after she’d walked in on them. That earns her a plus in his book, and he's not sure if he resents that or not. He has no reason to resent it, but perhaps this displeasure is caused by Eames being so amused by her. He amuses the forger, but rarely gets outright laughs out of him.

Arthur chooses to forget, at that precise moment, that he would normally not give a flying fuck if he amused Eames or not. This dream, surreal as it is, seems to be causing a jealous streak in the point man. He doesn't think he likes it. Equally, he does not like the way _Eames_ evaluates Ariadne, obviously drawing favorable conclusions, physically and mentally.

He fights back a scowl. This is ridiculous. Ariadne, meanwhile, is shrugging again. "He's very nice, but he's not really my type." One corner of her mouth curls upward. "If chemical compounds had genders, he'd be set for life, right?"

That earns her another laugh, and Arthur has to fight harder to rein in the scowl. "If he bothers you, let me know," he mumbles, looking out the window. Uptight Arthur has returned, even if he left briefly. Brow furrowed slightly, Ariadne eyes him curiously, wondering what she'd done to earn _that_.

"He's fine, Arthur. Are you... okay?"

When he looks back over, she's biting her lip a little and watching him worriedly. He deliberately does not look at Eames, but instead forces a smile, wondering what the hell is wrong with himself. "I'm fine. I apologize, Ariadne."

It would be impossible for Eames not to notice that Arthur is not looking at him, or for him to assume this isn’t deliberate, because a moment ago he had been perfectly willing to look at Eames, if only to scowl at him. Now the scowling is back and Eames, for once, has no idea why that should be. He hadn’t done or said anything to harass Arthur, deliberately at least. Neither had Ariadne, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem either, because he apologized to her.

Perhaps he doesn’t appreciate his hilarity at the expense of their marathon of slightly-too-loud dream-sex? Eames has no idea why that should be bothersome. Then again, he hardly has any idea why any of the numerous ways he harasses the man should be bothersome, but they are.

They’re all three quiet for a long minute after that, until finally the silence becomes too awkward for the overly-social Eames. “I don’t suppose either you or Marie Curie down there thought to furnish the place with a pack of cards, or _Sorry_. Maybe a television.” Except television is a tricky one, because all it would play is whatever show or movie the dreamer had memorized. Which is why Eames isn't particularly dying to watch any television.

Ariadne thinks back. "I could probably find a pack of cards," she agrees, to Arthur's stifled groan. This one is more or less good-natured; at least just now they can't all actually lose all of their money to Eames. Arthur might have an exceptional poker face, at blackjack or some other game not relying on a bluff, he fails. Often. "I suppose cards would be better than dice." And his totem remains safely in his pocket, thank you.

"Well, we could go for dice, too," Ariadne points out slowly, mischief in her eyes. "Yours should fall normally in a dream, right? Let's see."

She holds out her hand, and he smirks a little at her, not making a move. "Nice try."

"Worth a shot." Sitting back, she raises a brow at Eames. "You never mentioned what your totem is."

“No, I suppose I didn’t,” Eames says, and then makes no move to show her or elaborate. But he does raise an eyebrow at her, almost challengingly. He has faith that the architect can figure it out herself with very little brain power. It’s not a great mystery. Even Cobb figured it out.

Ariadne eyes him for a moment, pressing her lips together in a not-quite-frown of concentration, trying to determine what that look is for. And then she blinks, eyeing the hand Eames is holding his cigarette in, and then glancing down at his pocket. “A poker chip?” she asks, and it’s just this side of incredulous. “So obvious it’s almost not.”

“Sometimes conspicuousness is the best way to be inconspicuous,” Eames says sagely. The poker chip, along with its partner (there really should be two for it to function properly), remains in his pocket. “There really was no other choice.”

Absolutely none. Arthur does not say this aloud, but his skepticism is obvious in his expression. He shakes his head slowly, amused and smirking very slightly; Ariadne doesn't know how it is that Eames' totem informs him if he's in a dream. He doesn't think the other man would share that with the architect just yet, but he doesn't know.

"But the real question is, are all the words on your totem spelled correctly?" His voice is teasing, but not nearly so much so as usual.

Ariadne's brow furrows again, and she turns, brow raised, to blink at Eames. People (Arthur and Cobb) have made repeated ribbed comments about Eames' spelling; she's not mean enough to asks, but she is curious. "You forge poker chips, too?"

Deliberately not responding to the question in Ariadne’s gaze (he will force her to either ask or forget about it), Eames can’t help but smirk a bit. “Only when I run out of real ones,” he says, which is not true at all, but he doesn’t doubt that everyone present can guess at that. “As it’s a bit harder to forge people in reality, sadly, one must resort to other means of forgery to make a living.”

Much like, he supposes, Ariadne’s being an actual architect in reality. Should she actually carry out that life goal. Who knows if she will, now? Eames, for one, doubts it, but he doesn’t want to crush Arthur’s hopes that way. Ariadne raises an eyebrow. “I thought you were a thief outside of dreams.”

Eames puts the hand not holding his cigarette to his heart and affects a wounded expression. “You wound me, love, I am hardly so common. Who told you that, Arthur?” Of course it was Arthur. The wounded expression is dropped with all speed, though, and Eames takes a drag on his cigarette, looking thoughtful. “I suppose it all depends on the job. And the wallets.”

After that, he shoots Arthur a look that is less of a 'piss off' than he'd shot Cobb for such teasing. “As for my spelling, I don’t imagine I’d know, as someone would have to correct me and no one gets close enough, do they Arthur dear?”

Taking that for the challenge it is, Arthur just smiles right back at him; the expression is small, but visibly present. He wouldn't touch the other man's totem, no; one, he respects the idea of totems, and two, that would only invite Eames to touch his. But that by no means means that he will not go to extensive measures to see the poker chips. Very, very specific poker chips, at very close range. He wouldn't mind seeing them multiply, either, just out of curiosity.

"We'll see," he says musingly, and then his eyes crinkle at their corners. "If you've spelled Mombasa with two s's again, you've misspelled it. Or are they modeled after the Monte Carlo chips?" Or perhaps Montenegro. He wouldn't expect Eames to be so predictable as to have chips from Las Vegas; that would be far too common for the forger's taste.

The _look_ Eames had been sending Arthur intensifies a bit for a moment, but the idea of this challenge is too wonderfully tempting to ignore in favor of letting Arthur get to him. First of all, that would be admitting that Arthur _can_ get to him. And secondly, after the last… few hours?... Eames is in a ridiculously good mood and does not want to let go of that feeling just yet.

“Hmm, I can’t remember,” Eames says offhandedly, watching Arthur all the while. Of course he’s not going to make this _easy_ for the other man. Oh, no. “What a shame.”

Ariadne, meanwhile, blinks, ending her marathon of looking back and forth between them. She looks at Arthur. “If you’re about to strip-search him, I think I’ll take my chances with Yusuf.”

That gets an honest chuckle out of the point man, who shakes his head. "Been there, done that," he quips, managing to convey dismissiveness despite the amusement still on his face. Eames' eyes are narrowed now, and Arthur holds up his hands, palm out. "As though you'd let me find them even if I tried." Well. He'd hide them somewhere ridiculous... somewhere Arthur wouldn't be able to find... or at least not with Ariadne here.

"We won't leave you to Yusuf and his chemicals," he says after a moment of staring back at Eames' scowl and trying not to laugh again. That would not help matters. In fact, he's so distracted that he doesn't notice the significance of the word 'we' until he realizes... that he's never used that word and meant only himself and Eames before. And _that_ throws him off.

Eames catches it, too, but doesn’t refute him or say anything. Really, he doesn’t know _what_ he would say about that, and certainly doesn’t want to be reading meaning into anything that wasn’t supposed to have deeper meaning. His glower lessens after a moment, and Eames turns to Ariadne.

“He’s right of course, no need to consign you to such a fate,” Eames says.

“Wait,” Ariadne says, glancing from Eames to Arthur, then back. “Find _them?_ ”

Eames withholds a sigh, but is amused nevertheless. “Now you’re prising, sweet. What ever happened to those cards?”

Ariadne looks like she has no desire to get back to her feet, and so, gentleman as always, Arthur stands. "I'll find them," he offers, deciding that he's as good as any. Eames certainly won't. "As long as you haven't locked them in a safe." A joke, but not quite up to par, as he only gets a slightly amused chuckle from the architect in response.

"In a drawer in the kitchen," she clarifies. "Thanks, Arthur." Her smile is charming as ever, and he finds himself returning it a bit before making his way down the stairs. He finds Yusuf sequestered at a rather complicated-looking chemistry set and wonders if any of the work the chemist does this week will be things he can remember once they've woken... if he's even working on anything that's actually possible, or if he can use the results for more than just ideas. Anything can happen in dreams, but their sedatives worked fine. It's an interesting question, whether or not chemicals have their desired reactions here, in a dream level.

He returns to Eames and Ariadne, cards in hand and still a bit lost in thought. Eames gets the deck, and he returns to his former spot... or he would, were Ariadne not sitting in it. She smiles cheekily up at her, and he debates threatening to move her before giving in and sinking down on the concrete again, forming something of a half-circle with the two of them, around the window.

Eames smirks a bit, watching this, and after a moment begins shuffling the deck thoughtfully. And expertly, of course, but that surprises no one present. A few moments go by with Ariadne looking thoroughly pleased with herself and Eames looking thoughtful as he shuffles, Arthur just sitting quietly (he doesn’t glare at _Ariadne_ ), before finally Eames looks at his companions.

“Well?” he asks. “What are we playing, children? Dealer should pick, but I will take suggestions.”

“How about Go Fish?” Ariadne suggests, voice dry. Eames blinks at her. “All right, suggestions that you weren’t playing in primary school, to clarify.”

"So no Old Maid or War, then," Arthur concludes, looking a bit dejected. Eames rolls his eyes, this time, and the point man just looks amused. "I suppose five-card stud will have to do."

While the forger deals, Arthur shifts around a bit on the concrete; the movement is very slight, but he's trying to find a more comfortable position for his weight, as certain areas are aching a bit more than they normally would. Ariadne doesn't appear to notice, and he raises a brow at Eames rather pointedly, wondering why the forger doesn't seem to be afflicted with the same problem. Resignedly, the point man assumes that Eames probably has had a lot more practice than he, at least in the recent past.

He receives a smirk in response; Eames looks quite proud of both himself and Arthur for this. Of course, he's finding it a bit difficult as well, to be fair. But he hasn't gotten up and then come back to find a new seat. And, well, Eames would readily admit that he doesn't mind the aching. He rather enjoys it, actually. Makes a bloke feel accomplished. That, and pain is all in the mind, etcetera and so forth. It’s not actual pain. Which is a bit sad, actually. But it will be good when they wake up on the airplane, as that would be hard to explain…

The smirk disappears half a second before Ariadne looks up; Eames seems to be an expert at that. “We have nothing to bet with,” she points out.

“Could be strip poker,” Eames suggests immediately, to a glare that can’t quite hide amusement from Ariadne.

"What, no spare infinite number of poker chips up your sleeve?" Arthur quips with a small grin, shaking his head slightly at the forger's smirk. "That doesn't matter. The question is, did you give Fischer his wallet back?"

There's a brief pause, but then Eames' smirk makes a reappearance, and Arthur watches the light play over the forger's face with a raised brow. Sure enough, Eames reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the reputedly five hundred dollar- wallet. Arthur makes a playful grab for the money and gets a few bills out of his hand before the forger yanks it away, looking wounded. Ariadne looks at the point man expectantly, but he shakes his head at her, now, mock-serious. "You have to get your own out of him."

She turns to him with a set of very impressive puppy dog eyes, but Eames is wearing his shit-eating grin again, and Arthur wonders, curious now how far he'll make her go. "Don't let him get you to sit on his lap for it," he advises good-naturedly. "You're too good for him." And maybe, just maybe, this is a test for Eames. Just to see how far he'll go. Arthur would just... like to know. For future reference. Not that it really concerns him, since this is just a dream.

This gets a raised brow out of Eames, who agrees (silently, he doesn’t want to make a habit of agreeing with Arthur), but wonders what that says about Arthur. Who, as he recalls very vividly, he had just shagged senseless, and vice versa. He turns back to Ariadne, who is nigh on pouting, and very nearly laughs. Oh, she does very good puppy-dog eyes, he’ll give her that.

And he might just give in to it, too. After all, all of his usual tactics would not be particularly appropriate, all things considered. After a moment, her pout turns downright pitiful. “Eames, what fun will it be if I have no money to lose to you?” she asks, half whining, half reasoning.

Eames appears to consider this for a moment. Were this _real_ money, he would never have pulled the wallet out of his pocket in the fist place and let on that he had it. But it’s not, and so isn’t particularly valuable to him. So, after a moment, he reaches in, pulling out a few bills, and then holds them out, folded between two fingers, to Ariadne. The architect makes a grab for them, but then he pulls his hand back, just a little. “20% of whatever you’ve got at the end, pet,” he says, every inch the pragmatic gambler.

The pout turns into a glare in short order, and Eames moves to put the money in his pocket, where at some point the wallet had disappeared without the movement being obvious. “Oh, all right,” she says crossly, and Eames smiles, handing it over and returning to his cigarette and the cards, pretending not to hear her muttering something about sitting on his lap and strip poker and _men_.

"You signed on to work with us," Arthur points out, stifling a smile and managing to appear satisfactorily cowed when she glowers at him. Eames deals quickly, which Arthur is not surprised at in the slightest, and in short order it becomes clear that Ariadne has not mastered the art of the poker face. It's almost unfair, but Arthur watches Eames have no trouble whatsoever with taking her money.

"I guess our agreement is null if I don't have any money left at the end," she says resentfully, glaring at Arthur and pushing the pile towards him (he'd won that round). But the largest stack of bills is undoubtedly in front of Eames, and Arthur shrugs.

"I'm better with dice." He smiles again; more than either of them, he smiles with his eyes when it's a true smile, and it makes up for the lack of movement in the lower half of his face. "It only takes practice."

Ariadne continues sulking, but Eames smiles a little at the expression on the point man’s face. It’s sadly a rare expression to get out of him; it’s not that Arthur doesn’t smile, or look amused, just that it’s not typical, and can be missed if you don’t know what to look for. Eames, however, does. He has spent a lot of time studying Arthur over the years. For no particular reason. You know.

He does wonder how much better the man is at dice, but decides finding that out is for another time, as they have none. So instead, Eames turns to Ariadne. “Cheer up, Ariadne, 20% of nothing is still nothing, I’m cheering for you all the way.”

She glowers. He smiles. “You’ve got six very distinct tells, love. Stop yourself squinting when you’ve got rubbish for a start and maybe I’ll tell you the rest.”

Arthur stifles a snort when he says the word six, but apparently not well enough, because unlike Eames, who only gets glared at, he gets _hit_. Frowning, he shifts his arm out of her reach. "That was unnecessary." His mutter is rather resentful. "Hit _him_. He's the one taking all the money."

Eames' innocent face has made an appearance by the time Ariadne's glower returns to him, but he's too far away for her to kick or hit. "If I move he'll see it coming," she points out to Arthur, as though Eames wasn't sitting right there. And then she turns on the charming smile again. "Hit him for me?"

Arthur's brows go up. They exchange a long look, during which an entire conversation is held, and then he nods his agreement. "Gladly." And lunges at Eames.

By the time they have given up (IE Arthur has pinned the bigger man, but only barely), they've moved well away from Ariadne and the window, and all of the money has mysteriously disappeared. Arthur grins slightly at this and lets the now-whining forger up, arching a brow at the architect. "Fifty percent? I did all the heavy lifting." Pun entirely intended, of course.

Eames, meanwhile, has glares to spare as he looks between them. This is what he gets, see? He was even being _nice_. See if he’s nice to either of them ever again. Hint: he won’t be. He turns a rather impressively wounded look mingled with a scowl on Ariadne. “Here I was, trying to help you,” he says, “and you sic him on me.” He turns to Arthur. “I expected this behavior of _you_.”

Scowling is having no effect. Neither is muttering. But at least now he can sit back up. Arthur is lucky he didn’t play dirty and dropped his cigarette on the cement instead of using it as a weapon. Pride quite wounded, Eames spends a moment brushing off his shirtsleeves, and though he hardly paints a picture of high class with his shirtsleeves rolled up, tie halfway to undone, and hair a mess (he blames Arthur for that), manages to look almost disturbingly regal as he brushes his sleeves off.

“See if I help you again, traitor.” This is said to Ariadne. Despite the fact that Arthur was the one who attacked him. He will have his revenge on Arthur. All ideas for said revenge are highly inappropriate to announce right now, so Eames settles for shooting the other man a look that speaks quite clearly as to his intentions.

Completely unintimidated (although he admits to being curious about what this obvious revenge will entail), Arthur bites back a smile, merely raising a brow and eyeing the forger right back. "Sore loser."

 _That_ earns him narrowed eyes, and he shakes his head slightly, looking to Ariadne. "It's all right," he assures her, even though she doesn't look broken up at all over Eames' announcement that he has forsaken helping her. "I've got your back." She raises a brow right back to him but doesn't comment... or disagree. There's a small smile playing around her lips as she watches them, though.

Oh, yes. Eames is planning revenge of the likely very enjoyable kind, Ariadne is on his side and no longer flirting with Eames, and he just beat the forger in a more or less fair fight. Life is good.

Eames withholds a sigh, looking between the two of them, and instead rolls his eyes very obviously. Maybe they should have gone with Go Fish, if this is how they're going to react to losing. And by "they" he means Ariadne, because Arthur was doing just fine. He just used it all as an excuse. Which, as Eames had said, he perfectly expected of the point man, so no big surprise there. On the other hand, at least this proves that while Ariadne is awful at poker, she can still handle herself. For some reason, that makes Eames feel a little better, knowing that soon they'll be going their separate ways, and if she won't be sticking with Arthur or Cobb... who knows what she could end up mixed up in? She ended up mixed up with them, after all.

"I'm not sure I'm the sore loser," he points out, very clearly indicating Ariadne. She just smiles beatifically at him. Eames sighs, giving up. He still has the wallet. He protected that and his totem during that sudden attack. Wits about him, and all. "But Ariadne, how will you win all of my money if I have none?" he asks, mimicking her half-pleading, half-reasoning tone of earlier perfectly.

"Nice try," Ariadne returns, her grin entirely smug as she keeps her hands very carefully on the floor, not willing to accidentally divulge the location of the money. In fact, she doesn't acquiesce to Arthur's request for fifty percent, raising her brows at him. "You think? Fifty? We didn't agree on an amount; I was thinking ten."

And she's clearly enjoying herself, harassing them; abandoning Arthur with no scruples whatsoever (although, were the stakes for actual money, they both know, she hopes, that she would never cheat either of them, on principle alone), she turns the big brown eyes back on Eames. "I'll give you his fifty percent if you tell me what my tells are."

"Hey!" Arthur shoves Eames away when the forger looks as though he's considering the offer; this is the loudest exclamation either has heard from the point man since he'd begun yelling at Cobb after the limbo revelation. "You..." He takes back everything he'd thought about her being innocent and too honest for this. She's smirking widely at him and raising her brows at Eames. "That is _bad_ business practice. Christ, woman. That's how you make enemies."

Climbing to his feet, he advances on her slowly, looking much less intimidating than usual with his hair mussed from the fight and his shirt half-undone. She does seem like the type who would be ticklish; she doesn't move, meeting his eyes without looking afraid in the least, although there's a sensible wariness. "Don't do anything you'll regret, Arthur."

"Regret? No, I don't think so." And then his fingers find her sides, all pretensions of decorum abandoned, and she's giggling uproariously, curling into a ball to escape him.

This carries on until Arthur finally takes pity, which is about when Ariadne is laughing so hard she can’t get enough air in to shout at him to stop, or for Eames to help her (he doesn’t). Even when he lets go, the giggling doesn’t cease, and Eames, who is watching all of this from his spot on the ground (he never left), finds himself thoroughly enchanted by the both of them. Ariadne’s almost childlike giggling, for one, is adorable- there is no other word for it.

And Arthur… well. Eames has never seen him playing around like this. Ever. He doesn’t dare move to distract either of them or draw attention to himself but just sits watching, afraid to break the spell, and strangely pleased to see them at it in the first place, even though it also has him wondering… well.

When Ariadne can finally _breathe_ again, she turns a glare on Arthur, one that would be very withering if she wasn’t still bursting into giggles every few seconds. “I will have—“ A gasp, and a barely masked giggle. “—my revenge.”

Face returned to its normal composure, Arthur merely nods, not arguing. Poor girl. Of course she will. "I'm sure it will be diabolical," he says placatingly. She does not look amused by this lack of gravity, and her scowl deepens. Arthur accepts that he will be revenged upon sometime in the somewhat near future and decides that he may even let her succeed; amused but not stupid enough to show it, he turns to Eames with a raised brow.

"I guess if she doesn't give the money back, we're playing strip poker after all." The forger just watches him, and Arthur's brow furrows. He's going to take Ariadne's offer. The furrowed brow deepens into a dirty look. "Bastard."

Eames sends him a smile, not even slightly insulted. Right, as though Arthur doesn’t thoroughly deserve a little backstabbing himself. Anyway, that seems to be the name of the game right now. Despite the fact that a minute ago Eames had been blaming Ariadne more than Arthur for the vicious attack, he is now quite willing to side with the architect, mainly because she’s offering him 50%, despite the fact that it was his to begin with.

Well. Fischer’s. But then his. Definitely his before anyone else’s. Man doesn’t need a $500 wallet, anyway.

“Sorry, what goes around and all that,” he says with a shrug. “Besides, she ought to learn her tells, don’t you think?” It would certainly make poker more interesting.

Arthur harrumphs, but doesn't argue with that, sitting back and leaning on his hands. Ariadne looks amused, once she can breathe again, and pats his shoulder before turning her attention to Eames. "I'll pay you once you've told me."

"Oh, I don't think you should take _that_ offer," Arthur advises. "She's not one for holding to deals." Now he smirks a bit at the architect. "Although then again, if she doesn't pay you then she's stabbed us both in the back. If we ganged up on her, we'd definitely win."

She rolls her eyes at the point man. "You wouldn't gang up on me. You're too much of a gentleman." She is clearly talking only to Arthur, who raises a brow.

"I'd hold you down." He's only partially kidding. This sort of thing is all fun and games right now, but she'd make a mistake, trying to pull one over on someone else, someone who isn't them. Or someone who happened to be them, if this was reality and real money they were discussing. He smiles slightly. "I doubt Eames would be too gentlemanly to frisk you." A gentle reminder that while they're having a pretty enjoyable time at the moment, this is business, and they're not here to make best friends. He might like her and like her company, but he's not a teddy bear, and nor is the Forger.

Eames doesn’t look any more forgiving as he cheerfully agrees. “In fact I hardly qualify as gentlemanly at all.” So very, very true. Not that he is lacking in class, which he has. It’s that he hardly cares about the sensibilities of others and when push comes to shove, he would be perfectly willing to frisk someone, even a poor defenseless female, if she deserved it. He walks a fine line, and it’s not always a clear-cut sort of line, unlike Arthur’s.

But, in this case, of course he’s not going to do anything to poor Ariadne. He doesn’t actually need the money. Mainly because it’s not real. But he thinks the point is well-made, because Ariadne sighs and holds out the money, counting it out where he can see it. “Oh, fine. Money first.”

“That’s a dear,” Eames says, and it is taken and promptly disappears. “I’ve already told you one. Let’s deal a test hand, shall we, and I’ll point them out as they come. Don’t wrinkle your nose at me, that’s one of them, pet.”

There's a brief pause, during which Ariadne attempts to determine if he's being serious or not, but she finally erases the wrinkle from her nose, trying to make her expression as smooth as Arthur's. That isn't possible, of course, but she attempts not to look displeased when she sees that she only has a pair of fours in her hand, and nothing else remotely good.

She knows that good poker players could play a bluff from this hand and even probably win; she's certain Eames could, without a doubt. Maybe Arthur, too. Speaking of which... "Does Arthur have any tells?"

The point man sends her a raised brow, and turns to the forger, a bit curious. He'd thought he'd eradicated all of them previously, and he's very good, personally, at remaining still and impassive. But that's not precisely the same as being unreadable. "Yes, do I?" He glances back at Ariadne. "Nice diversion, although I thought you wanted your money's worth, here?"

“Yes, of course you do,” Eames says without looking up from his cards. “Everyone does.”

Of course, he hadn’t made a deal for Eames to tell him anything, so the forger does not elaborate. He doesn’t think there is any amount of money in the world, real or dream, which could make him tell Arthur any tells he’s picked up on. Absolutely not. Ariadne, yes. Arthur, no.

He glances up when no one has said anything to find them (not surprisingly) looking at him expectantly. “What? Oh, I’m not telling you.” He catches Ariadne’s smirk out of the corner of his eye and points. “You make that face when you think you’ve determined whether or not someone else is bluffing.” The smirk disappears, mostly. “Yes, on your way. And also the one eyebrow. The trick, Ariadne, is not to think on your cards.”

Ariadne blinks at him. “How are you supposed to play if you don’t think about your cards?”

“Well, obviously you look at them and register what they are,” he says. “But you concentrate not on your cards, but rather the cards of everyone else at the table. Don’t relate them to your cards except distantly.” She’s not very good at the distantly part. To do that, you have to separate yourself from the game and what it may or may not mean for you, and Ariadne simply is not good at that; she is very involved in everything she does.

A small wrinkle appears between Ariadne's brows, and she nods slowly, trying to do everything he'd said. She pulls her cards back so they're resting against her legs and she's not staring at them (it's true; she's already looked at them once and determined their worthlessness, he's right), and tries to guess what their cards are. But she has no idea how to do that, and both of their faces are impossible to read, to her.

Needless to say she loses that hand. And then again. The trend continues.

The poker game goes on, Ariadne continuing to lose (despite the fact that Eames does indeed tell her what all six of her tells are) until finally it just sort of disperses; even for Eames, there really is only so long you can play poker until you get tired of it. Time moves strangely here, though, and though they move on to other pursuits eventually, and though time seems like it's going more slowly than usual, it isn't. Soon enough, it's been days, and it's rapidly approaching the week time limit. And as it does, everyone becomes more and more nervous, wondering... well. They're all resigned that there won't be an sign of Cobb or Saito until they wake up. But now that it's nearing the time when they will... now they begin to worry.

Either way, Cobb and Saito _will_ wake up. Now it's only a question of whether or not they'll have minds when they do.

Luckily, and probably not surprisingly, nothing has gone wrong with Fischer's subconscious; in fact, despite the fact that Arthur had spent ninety percent of his time up in that room with the window, no one had spotted a single projection. Fischer's subconscious, it seems, thinks they are dead.

It's all just as well, but not being attacked also means that they're left alone to worry. Ariadne has gone off to a chair in the one corner of one of the rooms downstairs, reading and trying not to fidget. Yusuf has been at that chemistry set for at least a day. Arthur is upstairs keeping watch again, because he clearly feels that someone ought to be doing it and no one else offered (which means Eames hasn't offered, beyond that first time, although he has gone up and stayed up there _with_ Arthur). And so Eames is left to his own devices, handling what worry he admits to himself in typical Eames fashion: ignoring it completely. And playing solitaire in the kitchen. For about three hours.

Arthur finally descends the rickety staircase with less than an hour to go, by his watch, until they wake. He's had a countdown running since they'd first entered the dream, and with so little time left, he finally leaves his post to come downstairs and check on the other three dreamers. He glances in at Ariadne and Yusuf, and finally finds Eames in the kitchen, still more or less absorbed in his game, and in the same position he'd been in two hours before when Arthur had checked.

Setting the gun down next to the door, he sits down next to the forger at the table, silent as he watches Eames play, handling the cards with an odd, polished sort of delicacy, somehow different even from a practiced card-shark. He wonders briefly if it has something to do with being an actual forger in reality, or if that delicate sort of touch is just... Eames; he doesn't voice the thought, but does muse on it for a few minutes, fighting the urge to let his chin rest on his crossed arms. He's not ten.

"Are you headed back to Mombasa?" he asks finally. Somehow, in all of their conversations this week, the topic of where they're both headed after they leave the airport has never come up. Mentioning it, to Arthur, has seemed as though it would only make this wait even longer, thinking about what would happen after it was over.

The sound of actual speech breaks Eames out of the solitaire-induced stupor he'd been in, and he glances up at Arthur after a moment, game play never ceasing. The glance is short-lived, though, as he resumes watching the cards as he plays. He's silent for a moment, but the answer does come. "That's the plan," he says shortly.

Back to Mombasa, at least for a while, where he can be found by the right people. As exemplified by this last job, everyone he'd wanted to know where he was knew. Of course, he also knows that neither Arthur nor Cobb would last very long hanging about the place, what with the price on their heads, but perhaps Saito's plans involve clearing them of that, as well. Who knows? Not that that would matter, if Saito's mind doesn't wake up with him. But that, Eames has decided, he is not worrying about. It does no good to worry. It's not like he can do anything about it.

"Unless a good job magically appears before the mandatory lying-low period is over and I bother booking a flight, but if it does, I don't suppose I'll be doing a very good job of lying low," Eames muses. He glances over at Arthur again. There was never much question about his own plans, as they're about the same as always. But Arthur's... well, one way or the other, Cobb is out of the picture now. The point man will be flying solo indefinitely, now. Which is just as well, from Eames' point of view, as if Arthur had continued working with Cobb, Eames would be losing two colleagues, because he was quite serious about never working with Cobb again. And it would be a shame, because Arthur is very good at his job, and very fun to harass. And very good in bed, but Eames has no illusions about that. The odds of it carrying on beyond this week are not very good at all. "What about you?"

Arthur shrugs slightly, going through his mental calendar. His mother's birthday will be in just a few weeks, and he'd considered, before the job had actually begun, staying in Los Angeles to help Cobb settle in with the kids. Now... he's not sure. But still, he never had gotten back to see his mom, and she'll be furious if he misses her birthday.

"Stateside," he says finally, feeling a bit of deja vu after the conversation he'd had with Cobb... hell, weeks ago, or so it feels. "Try to find some work." It won't be difficult. It never is, and that's not his ego talking; he's good at his job, both of his jobs, and word gets around.

The idea of leaving this place is strange, the idea of waking up even stranger. He wonders what limbo must be like, since this place seems so familiar, so real to him after a week of it... but has no desire to find out. None whatsoever, as it happens. It's... unsettling, though, because as frustrated as he is with being stuck in this place... it hasn't been all bad. Not nearly, really; he would have expected it to be much worse. But when they wake up on the plane, all of this... whatever it is, with Eames, that can't continue on in the real world. This isn't real. This is a dream, and however relaxed he might have become during this week's span of time, he is aware that he would not be able to keep it up once he wakes. He just... can't. It's a physical reaction he's never been able to escape.

But right now, they're not awake yet, and so nothing is stopping him from shifting sideways in his chair, leaning over ostensibly to get a better look at Eames' cards... and resting his shoulder against the forger's as he does so.

It's... nice. Comfortable. Warm, no doubt about that, and not jarring, the way physical contact always seems to be in reality, a shock when it actually occurs.

Though he doesn't move or give any indication that this is strange or bad in any way- mainly for fear of either pissing him off or otherwise driving him off- Eames can't help but appreciate this easy contact. Because although they're not really constant companions (they seem to annoy one another _far_ too much for that, although Eames will take a great deal of the credit for that), they have known one another long enough, and Eames has spent enough time watching Arthur, that he is perfectly aware that this is thoroughly abnormal. In the sense that it would never happen, topside.

Which is both sad and interesting, because, well, who'd have guessed it would happen at all, down here? Who knows why it did? Eames has not been making a habit of wondering about that, because soon enough... well, it'll be done. Or so he assumes.

"I imagine there'll be a job or two in one of the states," he says after a moment. There are a few of them, after all. Fifty, to be precise. Now Mombasa is a bit of a different story, but then, the jobs he looks for are not always the same sort Arthur might be looking for. There is always someone to pull one over on everywhere you go. Eames can make his own work, easy.

"Probably," Arthur agrees, amused. He doesn't bother to hide his smirk, even though it fades a little after a moment. He hasn't become so demonstrative that he'd lean his head on Eames' shoulder or some other such idiocy (although he's noticed multiple times this week, and with no little admiration, that Eames does have very pleasantly broad shoulders, and had been a bit envious, not that he'd ever admit to it). But he does lean a bit more of his weight on the other man's arm.

The forger leans back after a moment, and Arthur decides that he's not moving. He'll just... stay right here, thank you, until they wake up.

Pleased with the smirk he’d received for his efforts, Eames is quiet after that, and when he leans back a bit they end up sitting more companionably than they ever have before, nearly leaning on one another. It’s an odd thing, Eames thinks. Although under all the harassment and annoyance he had always liked Arthur (and had a sneaking suspicion that the feeling was mutual, not that he’d ever get the point man to admit it), moments during which they had been truly companionable were few and far between.

It’s strange, and nice, and Eames finds himself wishing- if only briefly- that they didn’t have to wake up just yet. But they will, and things will go back to normal, at least for him. The fates of Cobb and Saito won’t change anything for him.

The time goes by quickly, after that, until finally it’s nearing the end, and Eames begins to wonder at how odd it will feel to wake up, finally. All of this will turn fuzzy and unreal, even though it seems so natural right now, and his mind will reassert itself in reality the way it always does. He’ll remember all of the details, has quite enough practice doing that by now, but… it won’t be the same. It’ll be exactly what it is: a dream. And when they wake up, no one will be able to speak to each other in the plane. That’ll be it. Goodbye, maybe permanently, for some of them.

So he does need to say this now. “If something goes wrong with this topside,” he says, meaning the job, which is still rather possible, “and you need help, you know how to find me. Cobb might have acted like a twat, but he’ll have more important things to deal with.” And Ariadne… Arthur is right. She should go back to school. Yusuf isn’t the sort you go looking to for help with problems in the real world. So that leaves him who knows all the ins and outs of this mess.

Arthur nods. He's not looking at his watch, but he's counting the seconds in his mind, unable to stop, even though he'd prefer to end that. "You have my number," he adds. "If anything goes wrong on your end." Not that he'll be welcome in Mombasa at any point in the near future, if Saito doesn't, or can't, hold up his end of their agreement and square things with Kobol. But he'd still come, is the point.

Ariadne has his number, too, he knows. He'd made sure of it, before they'd even left Paris for Sydney. He has the feeling that if something happened to Ariadne because of all this, despite what he'd said at the beginning of the week, both he and Eames would go to help her. Cobb, too.

He's trying not to think about Cobb, who will indeed have more important things to deal with, however this turns out. He'll either be with his children... or locked up in a federal psychiatric facility.

"Ten seconds," he says quietly. Leaning over and kissing Eames would be ridiculously stupid and sentimental. This isn't goodbye for life, here, it's the end of a dream that is definitely not reality, and reality will be entirely different in... seven seconds. Not that it matters.

Five seconds.

Four. He leans a bit harder against Eames' arm despite his own mental protestations.

Three. Two. _One_...

Eames wakes feeling mildly hungover, that fuzzy feeling where your brain seems like it’s trying its very best not to recognize that you’ve woken up making waking a bit of a process. It’s quiet in the cabin, and Eames allows himself a while to wake slowly, not wanting to overwhelm his brain with the sudden jump into reality. Still, even before he stretches, wanting to work the kinks out of his back from the little ten-hour nap, Eames’ hand slips into his pocket, fingering the two poker chips there.

Two remain, and, satisfied that he is indeed in reality, Eames finally allows himself to stretch a bit, using the movement to mask the fact that he’s scanning the cabin. Yusuf, Ariadne, Arthur, all awake as expected. Fischer, too. And then, when he finally allows himself to look… he sees Saito’s eyelids flicker… and then, Cobb’s. The extractor meets the eyes of everyone in the cabin in turn, and Eames feels the sudden spike of (frankly, unwarranted) fear dissipate. That’s Cobb, awake and aware. Saito picks up the in-flight phone, and proves that he, too, kept his mind intact.

Relieved despite his great show of not giving a shit, Eames sits back in his seat, closing his eyes for a moment. They survived… they performed inception successfully. Good Christ. Relief hits him hard, and Eames spends a minute just sitting there, taking everything all in in a distant sort of way, any nagging leftover feelings from the dreams drifting away until they’re just out of his reach, insubstantial and almost forgotten.

Arthur can't stop staring over at Cobb for another minute, a very unsurprised but still extremely impressed expression on his face. Dom looks more than half-shocked to be awake, to have it be over, himself, and Arthur finds that he can't blame the man for that. His own anger stays away for the moment, and he's in no hurry to bring it back, leaning back in his own seat once again and staring up at the ceiling. He recalls... well, everything, he's fairly sure, but it all seems so distant... everything he felt, thought about, seems like it happened somewhere very far away, and definitely not just now.

It's been ten hours since they boarded this plane, but it feels like a week, and that feeling is not surprising.

Time has sped up again, feels as though it's going by far too fast, and before he realizes it the seatbelt light has come on, and they're landing and taxiing down the runway. Then they're getting off the plane, and even though they can't say a word to each other, can't even act as though they're acquainted, he nods to Cobb as the man passes them at the luggage carousel, sees Eames ahead of him, Yusuf just nearby collecting his own bag. Ariadne had only had a carry-on, and she'd disappeared into the crowed as soon as she'd cleared customs.

He stops, once he's collected his suitcase, and watches Cobb pass Fischer near the door and meet Miles. The two men disappear into the sunlight, and Arthur wonders... should he feel something, now? This is the end of an era, a significant period of his life. He won't be working with Cobb now, anymore, either way. They just performed inception, which a week before he would have said was impossible. And during the course of that week, in that dream-warehouse...

Turning to leave, he finds a familiar figure clad in black silk, jacket, shirt and trousers, waiting and leaning on his suitcase. Raising a brow, he walks right past the forger, nodding slightly and continuing on his way to the door without pause. Moment to be remembered or not, he has to leave the airport, and he has to do so on his own, because his partner betrayed him... and is now a civilian again.

Arthur gets a slight smile in return, and Eames watches him go without a word, either. He doesn’t know why he does it, really, and so a moment later turns to follow, getting into line and watching without actually watching as Cobb goes through the line… hands over his passport… and is let through without a single eyebrow being raised.

Eames fights the urge to turn and look at Saito, then. He’d done it. They made it back, all of them, and Cobb will be going back to his children, Saito to his billions, Ariadne to school (hopefully), and the rest of them to various and sundry illegal pursuits.

After that, things speed up a bit, despite the fact that there’s all sorts of waiting in line to be done. Luckily, US customs doesn’t mind Brits so much, or he would probably have used an American alias. The line doesn’t take long at all, which is odd, or it feels that way, Eames doesn’t know, and then he’s heading for the front of the building, towards the great outdoors, car rentals and taxis galore. He can’t see anyone else, now, but somewhere along the line he spots none other than Arthur, and for a few moments… Eames considers following him. Maybe cajoling him into driving him to his hotel just so Eames will leave him be. A week… ten hours ago, he probably would have done it just to be an arse to the point man.

Something stops him, though, and at the last moment, Eames turns, walking out through a different door and into the too-bright L.A. sunlight, suitcase in hand as he makes not for the car rentals, but the street. A taxi will do just fine.

 

 


End file.
